Khan: Canelo is a flat-footed fighter, I can beat him

By Boxing News - 02/05/2016 - Comments

Image: Khan: Canelo is a flat-footed fighter, I can beat himBy Dan Ambrose: Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) says he initially was hesitant to take the fight with the much bigger WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs), but after sitting down and watching tape of some of his fights, he realized that Canelo is a flat-footed fighter that he believes he can beat.

Khan will be fighting Canelo on May 7 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Khan says he sees the fight as a 50-50 affair because of his hand speed and boxing ability. Khan believes he can out-box the bigger Canelo to earn a victory over him.

Khan sees his movement and speed as being crucial for him in being able to give the 25-year-old Canelo a defeat. Canelo is four years younger than Khan, and he doesn’t have the same kind of amateur experience. Canelo’s got all of his experience at the pro level in facing a lot of lesser fighters in the early stages of his career to pad his record and help him learn.

“I think it was the brave and right thing to do,” Khan said via Sy Ammed about fighting Canelo. “I wanted to fight Floyd Mayweather, but that fight didn’t happen. Then I wanted to fight Manny Pacquiao, but that fight didn’t happen. I spoke to Oscar De La Hoya, and he said ‘Look, what do you think of Alvarez?’ At first, I thought ‘he’s too big for me.’ But when I studied a few tapes, I thought ‘I have a good chance of beating him.’ I really believe I can beat him. I’ve got the speed, I’ve got the movement, and I’ve got the power at that weight. I really think I can. He’s a flat-footed fighter that comes forward. He’s very powerful and strong. But when I put the whole puzzle together, he’s beatable. I want the fight. So I told my team, and they were like ‘really? You want Alvarez?’ I said, ‘Yeah, make the fight.’ They then went and made the fight for me. I can definitely go into this fight with the power and the strength and everything. I really think this is going to be a 50-50 fight, because I have a lot of skills,” Khan said.

Canelo is definitely a flat-footed fighter without a lot of speed of foot. If Khan is able to use movement against him, then this could be a problem for Canelo. If you sit down and watch Canelo’s fight against Erislandy Lara from 2014, Canelo was missing punches all night long. The only thing he could do in the fight was land body shots. He catching head shots from Lara in every round. However, the judges felt that Canelo’s one or two body shots that he landed in each round was enough for him to win rounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nkNE9SK7To

It was a controversial thing though, because Lara was landing the better shots in each round, but the judges were still giving the rounds to Canelo based one him landing a small amount of body shots. If Khan uses the same approach as Lara against Canelo, then he’s going to need to focus on throwing more punches if he wants to make sure gets the win.

Canelo is very hard to beat by a decision for some reason. A lot of fans believe that Canelo was beaten by Lara, Austin Trout and Jorge Juarez, but the judges haven’t seen things the same way. Even in Floyd Mayweather’s one-sided win over Canelo in 2013, there was a judge that scored it a draw.

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