Khan vs. Canelo set for May 7th in Las Vegas

By Boxing News - 02/03/2016 - Comments

canelo7By Ivan Godfrey: The boxing world was sent into a frenzy of shock and debate yesterday, following the unexpected announcement of a fight between Britain’s two-time world champion Amir `King` Khan(31-3,19ko`s) and the WBC middleweight champion of the world Saul `Canelo` Alvarez(46-1-1,32ko`s).

No one in the industry (bar the two boxer`s management teams) predicted this to be the match up for the fiery haired Mexican`s first defence of the title he acquired from the legendary Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto in November of last year. Most anticipated the welterweight Khan would be facing either his fellow Brit Kell Brook at Wembley stadium in June, or failing that, WBC champion Danny Garcia.

Canelo fights in the middleweight division, albeit at a catch-weight of 155 lbs, as opposed to the usual middleweight limit of 160 lbs, and usually rehydrates to somewhere in the mid 170`s. Amir, meanwhile has only recently moved up from the super lightweight division, where he won his two world titles, to the full welterweight limit of 147 lbs, and has never competed above this weight limit. Canelo will be outweighing Khan by a significant amount and with this weight differential, many predict Amir to be knocked out by the hard hitting Mexican.

Despite this, Bolton`s Khan believes he has the speed and technical ability to claim the middleweight championship, come May 7th. The blueprint has already been printed by Floyd Mayweather Jr, who used movement along with his excellent jab to completely dominate Canelo over 12 rounds. In addition to this Canelo was given huge trouble by the fast hands of both Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara, whom despite losing on the cards to Canelo, gave the young Mexican all that he could handle by using their movement on the outside to evade the punches of the relatively slow-footed Alvarez.

Most so-called boxing experts have not given Amir too much of a chance to pull off the upset, although many are giving the 29-year-old Khan huge amounts of credit for taking on such an apparently mammoth task. Only WBA light welterweight champion Adrien Broner has initially come out and voiced his prediction of an Amir Khan victory. Khan`s former trainer Freddie Roach has voiced his admiration for Khan, in taking the fight on. However, Roach doubts whether Khan will be able to out-box Canelo for the full 12 rounds, akin to Mayweather in 2013.

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I for one am licking my lips at the prospect of this match up and congratulate Amir for taking it on. He will need to fight the perfect fight from round one to come away with victory. Although i believe, due to the fact that he won’t need to drain himself to make the weight for this fight, that perhaps his punch resistance will be improved, as it appears to have been since he moved up to the welterweight division. The version of Khan whom out-boxed Devon Alexander for 12 rounds may well be able to keep Canelo off of him during the fight.

Khan will need to land meaningful flurries of punches when Canelo is in front of him and immediately move out of the pocket afterwards. Khan has much faster foot movement than Canelo so this should be possible to do. The question will be whether he can land enough meaningful punches on Canelo when he is in front of him for this short space of time and will Amir be able to maintain his discipline to keep on moving out of range of Alvarez`s punches for the entire 36-minute fight. Either way it will be intriguing and i believe a harder fight for Canelo, win or lose, than most people predict.



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