(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” ALvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) is still talking about his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. as being a gift to him because of the things that he learned in the loss.
What those things are is unknown, but Canelo is telling everyone that will listen that it was a great learning experience for him to get beaten by Mayweather last September. We’ll see if that’s true when Canelo fights Alfredo Angulo (22-3, 18 KO’s) next month on March 8th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
“I learned a lot from the Mayweather fight, not only physically, but mentally. It was a great learning experience…I’ve been applying everything I learned into this camp and trying to refine some of the things I do.”
I don’t see how Canelo can learn from the loss to Mayweather, because the things that Canelo had problems with in that fight, such as his flat-footed stance, his lack of hand speed and his poor stamina, are things that aren’t going to be changed no matter what Canelo does to try and change them. He’s never going to have great conditioning, and he’ll always have average hand speed and his flat-footed stance. Canelo is physically constrained to the fighting style that he has now and it’s not something that can be changed by Canelo mentally thinking through them.
The good news is that Canelo has a good chance of beating Angulo on March 8th, but that’s largely due to Angulo not being a talented fighter. He’s just a slow slugger with good power, but not much else going for him. Angulo can’t beat Canelo unless Canelo stands in front of him making it easy for him to land his big shots. Canelo has already said that he’s been studying Angulo’s fights, specifically his 2009 fight against Kermit Cintron, in order to figure out how to beat him.
Cintron used nonstop circling of the ring to keep out of the way of Angulo in winning a dull 12 round decision. An exciting fight, it was not. Cintron stunk it out in that fight, but he did enough to get the win by staying on the move constantly. If that’s the way that Canelo will be choosing to fight on March 8th, then I feel sad for the boxing fans who will be paying to see the fight on Showtime pay-per-view, because many of them are under the mistaken impression that Canelo will be getting in the trenches to slug with Angulo and beat him at his own game.
Canelo obviously isn’t going to do that. He’s going to likely try and imitate Mayweather with his shoulder roll defense and his way of leaning backwards to avoid shots. Canelo won’t be able to use ring movement like Mayweather used to do or how Cintron did against Angulo, but he’ll definitely be trying to move as much as possible. Canelo doesn’t stand a chance to beat Angulo if he stands in front of him, because he doesn’t have the chin to beat a fighter like Angulo by standing in the pocket.
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