Weights: Canelo 155, Khan 155

By Boxing News - 05/06/2016 - Comments

khan873By Jim Dower: WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) and Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) both made weight today at their weigh-in for Saturday’s fight on HBO PPV from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

A very drained looking Canelo weighed in at 155lbs, and looked like he had worked hard to take weight off for the 155lb catch-weight. For his part, Khan also came in at 155lbs. Khan looked like he was at his fighting weight already. Khan’s trainer Virgil Hunter said he expects Khan to be at 160 or 161 tomorrow night, which means we’ll only see Khan rehydrate five to six pounds. Canelo is expected to rehydrate into the 170s, possibly 180.

Other weights on the card:

David Lemieux 160 vs. Glen Tapia 159.5
Frankie Gomez 146 vs. Mauricio Herrera 145.5
Patrick Teixeira 159 vs. Curtis Stevens 160
Diego De La Hoya 122 vs. Rocco Santomauro 121
Jason Quigley 160 vs. James De la Rosa 162

Canelo will likely have a 10 to 20 pound weight advantage by the time he steps foot inside the ring tomorrow night. You could tell how drained Canelo was by the way face and upper body looked totally drawn from the loss of water weight. Canelo is clearly a middleweight at this point in his career, but for some reason he insists on fighting at 155.

This loss of huge amounts of water weight for Canelo to artificially stay to stay at a weight that his body can no longer will catch up to him sooner or later. It could be tomorrow night, although he is the favorite to win.

When you take off the kind of weight that Canelo does to fight at 155, it’s only a matter of time before he weakens himself to the point where he can no longer fight hard for 12 rounds. If Canelo can only produce for six rounds tomorrow night before gassing out due to the weight class, Khan could take over the fight and pull off an upset.

With Canelo now face of boxing now, it’s going to be difficult for Khan to win by decision. Khan might need to really dominate Canelo for him to have a chance of winning a decision against the popular Mexican fighter.

“His left hook to the liver matches anything,. The punch he put Marcos Maidana down with was as good as anything I’ve seen,” said Khan’s trainer Virgil Hunter to BBC Sport. “He can really hit to the body. But I don’t advise him to trade punches with Alvarez, because he’s giving up too much size.”

Khan won’t likely slug with Canelo unless he gets really comfortable in the ring on Saturday night. It’s going to be hard for him to get comfortable against a guy that outweighs him by as much as 20 pounds in the ring. Canelo is a huge fighter and is a true middleweight unlike Khan, who is coming up from welterweight to take this fight.

Canelo and his management are saying he’s not a middleweight, but he’s clearly a middleweight at this point in his career. It seems difficult for Canelo to come to terms with the fact that he’s no longer a 154lb fighter. When you see Canelo as drained looking as he was today in making 155, the only conclusion you can draw from that is he’s a middleweight and doesn’t seem eager to fight at the full weight for some reason.

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“Canelo is definitely the most powerful of the two, But Khan’s volume of punches reminds me of Joe Calzaghe,” said Bernard Hopkins of Golden Boy Promotions to BBC Sport . He’s a guy who swarms you with punches so that by the time you get your bearings, the fight’s over. You’re not going to die, you didn’t get hurt, but you’ve got so many bee stings you don’t know where to scratch. You just know you’ve got to get the hell out of there. Canelo will win by a knockout in the 9th or 10th round.”

Khan’s fighting style is different than Calzaghe. If Khan had the defensive skills that Calzaghe possessed, then Canelo would have no chance whatsoever of winning the fight, because Calzaghe was a master fighter.

If Khan can fight like Calzaghe tomorrow night, then Canelo will be in deep trouble because he can’t beat someone with the kind of skills that Calzaghe possessed. Canelo is the type of fighter who wins on size mismatches rather than someone who can be depended on to beat someone his own size or larger. We already saw Canelo barely beat Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout in recent years, and those guys were the same size as Canelo and had fighting styles that involved movement.