(Photo credit: Gene Blevins – Hoganphotos/Roc Nation Sports/Golden Boy Promotions) By Dan Ambrose: 25-year-old former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) says he’s learned from his loss that he sustained against unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) from two years ago in 2013, and he plans on using the things that he learned from that defeat in his fight against WBC middleweight belt holder Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) on November 21st.
However, if Canelo has learned anything from that fight, we certainly haven’t seen it any of his fights since then, because he looks just as vulnerable now as he did back then. The only real difference that I can see is Canelo hasn’t faced a quality opponent in the last couple of years and this has enabled him to keep winning.
I thought Canelo lost the fight to Erislandy Lara last year, and he looked really bad in that fight. It was the same Canelo that lost to Mayweather.
“I have had tough fights as well as learned a lot from the Mayweather fight and have matured more as a fighter,” Canelo told Fightnews.com. “He caught me by surprise in the first round but I learned a lot from that fight.”
Mayweather dominated the first nine rounds of the fight with Canelo, so it’s hard to see why he’s saying he was caught by surprise in the 1st round. Canelo was caught by surprise in every round. It wasn’t until Mayweather started coasting after the 9th that Canelo was able to have any success. But if Mayweather had wanted to, he would have continued to dominate Canelo just like he had in the first 9 rounds.
It was just a total domination. Canelo didn’t belong in the same ring with Mayweather. That was clear from the 1st round. Marcos Maidana did a far better job than Canelo did in his two fights with Mayweather despite the fact that he lost both of them and he didn’t have nearly the same size as Canelo. If Maidana walked into the ring with Mayweather in the 170s, he would have given him a lot of problems.
I don’t think Canelo has learned anything from his loss to Mayweather, and that’s why I can see Cotto having a chance of beating him. All Cotto needs to do is study the Mayweather-Canelo fight well, and use what Mayweather employed to beat him by a decision. This means that Cotto needs to box Canelo, don’t stand in front of him, and jab him to pieces all night long.
I can see Cotto doing that because he’s a smart fighter. But it’s going to be up to Cotto, because if he depends on his trainer Freddie Roach to give him a good game plan for this fight, I think he’ll wind up losing. Roach will likely tell Cotto to attack Canelo, and that’s not what he needs to do. Cotto has no business attacking the light heavyweight sized Canelo. We’re talking about a fighter who should be in the light heavyweight division fighting guys like Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev and Artur Beterbiev. Cotto has to box the 175lb Canelo and not look to mix it up with this guy, because he’s a guy fighting out of his class against smaller guys.
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