Canelo 160.2 at 7-day weigh-in

By Boxing News - 11/15/2015 - Comments

canelo100By Dan Ambrose: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) weighed in at 160.2lbs at the 7-day weigh-in yesterday for his fight next Saturday night on November 21st against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

With 5.2lbs to go for the 25-year-old Canelo to get down to the 155lb catch-weight for the fight, he already looks really thin and not healthy for him. I suspect Canelo will make the weight, but I believe it’s going to ultimately hurt him in the later rounds if the fight goes that far.

Canelo’s stamina problems are likely the result of him cutting so much weight to make his 155lb catch-weight fights. By the time Canelo gets down to 155lbs this Friday at the weigh-in, he’ll likely have dropped 20 pounds. I don’t care who you are, you’re not going to be at your best if you have to take off 15-20 pounds to make weight.

Fighters that are typically at their best are ones that only need to take off 5-12 pounds at the most. Gennady Golovkin only takes off 10 pounds to make weight for his fights. He rehydrates to 170. That’s perfect for him, because he looks really thin in getting down to 160. If he had to drain down to 155 like Canelo, I think it would hurt Golovkin’s performances.

Cotto won’t have any problems making weight for this fight because his natural weight is a little over 160. He’s a natural junior middleweight, and he doesn’t come down from the mid-170s like Canelo does. For that reason, I suspect that Cotto will have a lot more energy in the second half of their fight this Saturday night on HBO PPV than Canelo.

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It means that for Canelo to do well in this fight, he’s going to need to get to Cotto early on because the longer the fight lasts, the weaker he’s going to get and the stronger Cotto will get.
“This guy, Freddie Roach, if I follow his advice, I will beat him [Canelo] on November 21st,” Cotto said.

Cotto believes that Roach has all the knowledge he needs for him to beat Canelo in this fight. Roach hasn’t been wrong yet for Cotto in leading him to wins over Delvin Rodriguez, Sergio Martinez and Daniel Geale. Cotto is 3-0 with Roach as his trainer, and is looking better than he has in years. Roach has done an excellent job of utilizing Cotto’s natural assets – his left hook, jab and movement to get the better of his opponents. More importantly, Roach has done a good job of coming up with the perfect game plans for Cotto to win his last three fights.

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It’s likely that Roach has scouted Canelo well by studying is past fights, and has come up with the perfect plan for Cotto to beat him this Saturday night. Roach isn’t perfect though, as we saw how Manny Pacquiao couldn’t use what Roach instructed him to do in order to beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their fight on May 2nd of this year. However, if you listen to what Roach was telling Pacquiao in between rounds of that fight, and then look at what Pacquiao was doing, it’s pretty obvious that the advice Roach was giving the Filipino fighter was going in one ear and out the other.

Pacquiao wasn’t following what Roach was telling him to do. While Roach was instructing Pacquiao to go after Mayweather and put tremendous pressure on him, he failed to do so. Pacquiao looked like he was afraid to get hit while on the way in. That’s the difference between Cotto and Pacquiao.

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When Roach tells Cotto to do something, Cotto is extremely disciplined in following the instructions that Roach gives him to the letter. In that respect, Cotto is like a soldier who follows the orders from his General without fail. When you have a fighter with that kind of discipline, they’re very hard to beat, especially when they have an intelligent trainer like Roach guiding them.

“Someone made a mistake,” Roach said about Canelo being a 2:1 favorite in the fight for Saturday. “I have a lot of belief in my fighter, and we’re going to come kick some [backside] and take some money home. I like that he’s [Canelo] the favorite. I like being the underdog and I love upsets. I’m betting both houses on that [Cotto winning],” Roach said.



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