Hopkins talks Canelo-Khan fight

By Boxing News - 03/21/2016 - Comments

1-DSC07364By Dan Ambrose: Bernard Hopkins believes that WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. three years ago left a bad taste in his mouth from that experience. Canelo doesn’t want to go through that feeling again in his next fight against Amir Khan, and he’s going to be wanting to get him out of there fast so that he doesn’t have that same experience for a second time.

Hopkins sees Canelo as the fresher of the two fighters despite the fact that he has more fights under his belt than Khan. Perhaps one reason why Canelo comes across to Hopkins as the younger fighter of the two is because he’s not had to take too much punishment in his fights. Canelo is frequently been heavier than his opposition.

Whether that’s by design or not is unclear. There are some boxing fans who feel that Golden Boy doesn’t have belief in Canelo that he can beat elite fighters unless he outweighs them by a huge amount. It’s similar to how former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. used to rehydrate up in weight to enjoy an advantage over his opponents before he could no longer make weight for the division.

“Khan is a boxer. He’s not the hardest puncher. He’s more like a guy that’s not flashy but has such deep pedigree,” said Hopkins to Fighthype. “Canelo is just rough and tough, who is going to bring his weight and pressure. I know Canelo’s the bigger, meatier guy, and younger, stronger and fresher. I think because of the Mayweather fight, the experience that left a bad taste of losing. He got a taste of that. Amir Khan was begging Floyd for three years to get that shot. Psychologically, Canelo has been there before. Amir Khan now finally gets his first chance to say I finally got here because you been chasing Floyd.”

It’s true that Khan has finally got to the big time with a mini-mega fight against Canelo. It’s just too bad that Khan had to fight a middleweight to get to the big time. Few boxing fans believe that Canelo is a junior middleweight despite the fact that he still proclaims himself to be that.

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As big and as heavy as Canelo is, he’s clearly a middleweight. He just doesn’t want to admit it for some reason. I guess if he did, he would then lose an excuse for him needing he 155lb catch-weight handicap for his fights at middleweight.

“This fight, the footwork is going to be the key,” said Khan to Fighthype. “The times I’ve been put down in fights is because my positioning was so bad. My footwork wasn’t in the right position. If you are in a good position and you have good balance and you’re stabilized, you can take a hard shot.”

Khan will no doubt be using his footwork against Canelo, and he very likely will make him look bad and give him problems throughout the fight. However, Canelo showed that he can beat a mobile fighter in the past when he defeated Erislandy Lara despite the fact that Lara was moving all night long.



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