Fury: Khan has the speed to beat Canelo

By Boxing News - 02/05/2016 - Comments

fury11111By Scott Gilfoid: IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury is siding with underdog Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) in his important clash with WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) on May 7. Fury believes that Khan has the hand and foot speed to do the job on the slower, but much bigger, younger and stronger Canelo.

Fury notes that the 25-year-old Canelo hasn’t knocked many people out in his last five fights despite possessing a lot of punching power, and he says he’s not been a world champion for too long. Fury sees Canelo as a pumped up welterweight, who has moved up in weight over the last five years.

Fury doesn’t see Canelo as a natural middleweight. I’m not sure that it really makes much of a difference though when you’re as young as Canelo. He may not have been a middleweight right off the bat when he turned pro, but he was still growing and eventually got there through the growing process. I don’t see that as making Canelo any less a middleweight than he is right now.

“He couldn’t get [Floyd] Mayweather, he couldn’t get [Manny] Pacquiao so who is the biggest name out there?” Fury said to skysports.com. “It had to be Alvarez or [Gennady] Golovkin – but he is a full-blown middleweight whereas Alvarez is a blown-up welterweight and seems a big puncher, but has hardly knocked anyone out in his last five opponents, has he?”

I don’t think it matters that Canelo hasn’t knocked out a lot of people recently. He’s had tough fights against Erislandy Lara, Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Miguel Cotto. Of course, those guys are going to be extremely difficult to KO because they’re more or less around the same talent level as Canelo. With the exception of Mayweather, Canelo was more popular than those fighters. I don’t think Canelo beat Lara, Austin Trout or Cotto, but he got the victories over them based on being more popular in my opinion. I think he lost to Trout and Lara, and fought to a draw with Cotto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpOnqvHqlrY

“Alvarez has got slow feet, so the key to beating him will be speed and Amir Khan’s got that,” Fury said. “But remember, anything is possible. Don’t forget I went into the Klitschko fight as a 5/1 underdog, as a rank outsider, but I came out victorious.”

There’s a big difference in Fury beating a 39-year-old Wladimir Klitschko, who has been on the slide for some time, and Khan beating an in his prime Canelo. Those are two different things. I don’t think for a second that Fury would have beaten Wladimir from 1998 to 2013. I think that version of Wladimir easily beats Fury and knocks him out. But from 2014, Wladimir hasn’t looked the same. He appears, slower, less accurate, and his work rate appears to be down from the number of punches he used to throw. The most telling thing that jumps out at me about Wladimir is his poor accuracy with his punches. He can’t hit a moving target any longer. He also doesn’t seem capable of pulling the trigger on his shots like he once did.

Canelo does have slow feet, and in theory this would be something that Khan could take advantage of with his fast movements around the ring. Never the less, Khan fights like he has no sense at all in his head, and he just move around without thinking half the time. Khan wastes energy just moving for no reason at all. Khan is the opposite of a guy like Floyd Mayweather Jr. in terms of ring intelligence in my view.

I rate Mayweather as a 10 in ring IQ. I see Khan as a 2 in the ring IQ department. He just does not think in the ring, and he makes way too many mistakes. Khan’s last fight against Chris Algieri was the perfect example of how he doesn’t think in the ring. Khan let Algieri walk him down all night long without nailing him with jabs and right hands the way Mayweather would have done. Khan didn’t seem to know what to do, and he made what should have been an easy fight into a very difficult one.

Khan’s fast feet won’t help him against Canelo, because he’ll end up making enough mistakes for Canelo to get him out of there within six rounds.



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