Canelo talks about loss to Mayweather: “One fight isn’t everything”

By Boxing News - 02/11/2014 - Comments

canelo12(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) wants to put his embarrassing loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. behind him by beating Alfredo Angulo (22-3, 18 KO’s) next month and looking impressive in doing at on March 8th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Canelo feels that his defeat to Mayweather Jr. was a learning tool for him, and that it doesn’t mean that his career is over.

“I consider myself a person with a strong mindset and that’s how I moved on from the loss against Mayweather,” Canelo said. “I always train to win, like everybody else and unfortunately last September was not the case. I’m training to make history and be one of the best in boxing history. One defeat is not everything. The biggest boxers in history have been defeated. For instance, Muhammad Ali was defeated and he came back.”

The fact that Canelo needs to remind boxing fans about this seems to suggest that there’s some self doubt lurking in the mind of the red-haired former champion. Canelo has looked poor in his last two fights, and it’s understandable why he might be questioning himself. He went life and death with Austin Trout, and then Trout turned around and was easily beaten by Erislandy Lara. That kind of gives a good idea where Canelo stands in the pecking order at 154.

It’s kind of silly for Canelo to be comparing himself with Ali when Canelo had never fought a halfway decent opponent in his career until he fought Austin Trout, and that fight showed pretty clearly that Canelo wasn’t nearly as good as his followers his previously thought he was. Instead of comparing himself with the likes of Ali, Canelo should see himself as just another contender with the talent of someone like Trout. That’s where Canelo is in the talent department, I hate to say. He needs a lot of improvement for him to get to where guys like Erislandy Lara is because he’s not nearly as good as the Cuban fighter right now. The stamina isn’t there for Canelo, and he doesn’t have the foot or hand speed to be talking about himself in the same breath as Ali.

Don’t be surprised at all if Angulo defeats Canelo on March 8th, because this guy has the kind of power that can expose him. I expect Canelo to do a lot of resting on the ropes after he gasses out from the fast pace that Angulo will be setting in the fight. Canelo talks about both of them throwing a lot of punches, but I don’t see that happening. Canelo will get tired and will need his customary rest breaks, and that’s when Angulo is going to put a hurting on him. I just hope Canelo can regroup fast enough to prevent Angulo from knocking him out, because that would be really bad if he suffered his second defeat in a row. At that point Canelo would need to downsize his ambition to that of being just a contender rather than some day recapturing a world title at 154.



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