By Chris Williams: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) has done a lot of cherry-picking of INCREDIBLY soft opponents in the last 4 years of his career since he was humbled by Floyd Mayweather Jr in 2013, but the cherry-picking from the redheaded star may backfire on him tonight when he fights Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The years and years of cherry-picking for Canelo is going to cause his world implode tonight when Chavez Jr. gives him a thrashing he won’t soon forget in front of the boxing public. This is how it goes in boxing. You get a fighter like Gennady Golovkin or Canelo, who both have been matched softly for years and years. When they finally get put in with a good fighter, they fall apart quickly when they’re met with resistance. We then see bubble burst on their mystique.
Tonight, I see Canelo’s years of cherry-picking coming back to bite him on the backside with the battle-tested Chavez Jr. showing him who the better Mexican fighter is of the two, and dealing him a beating on Cinco de Mayo in front of the throngs of boxing fans that will be watching the fight live.
I have a feeling this is going to be one cherry pick that will explode in the face of Canelo when he gets out there and starts taking big this from a bigger, stronger and highly motivated Chavez Jr. Canelo will be the smaller fighter tonight when he gets inside the ring with Chavez Jr. I don’t think Chavez Jr. is going to be weakened from the debilitating 164.5lb catchweight for the fight. I think he’ll be strong as an ox and ready to take Canelo to a place he’s never been before in his career. Chavez Jr. has had many wars during his career.
Canelo has had none. The closest thing that Canelo came to a war was him taking a few shot against a much lighter looking Miguel Cotto, who looked like he was outweighed by 20 pounds in their fight in 2015. Cotto didn’t have the weight to compete with Canelo. That fight was the equivalent of Canelo fighting light heavyweight Sergey Kovalev. Canelo would be blasted apart by a much heavier Kovalev if the two of them were to fight. Cotto didn’t have the size to make it a fair.
Canelo has always been the heavier guy in his fights. Tonight, he won’t be, and that’s where we could see an upset. But also because Chavez Jr. is the more experienced and battle-tested fighter. Chavez Jr. has always taken a lot of punishment in his fights and risen above it in most cases. In Canelo’s case, he was hurt from taking a handful of power shots in his fight against Mayweather.
Canelo is not good being on the receiving end of punishment. Canelo dish it out, but he can’t take the heat in the same way. Tonight, Canelo is going to need to use his boxing skills if he doesn’t want to get knocked out immediately by Chavez Jr., because he doesn’t have the mental make-up to win a war against Chavez Jr. It doesn’t matter though. I think Chavez Jr. is going to get to Canelo in the later rounds and expose him for what he is – a fighter that has had a career’s worth of cherry-picks.
Let’s make this clear; I don’t have a dog in this hunt. I don’t care about who wins or loses the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight tonight. I just think that Canelo is about to get exposed – again.
We saw that Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy wanted to make sure the cherry-pick of Chavez Jr. wouldn’t backfire on them, as they made sure that there was strength draining catchweight of 164 ½ pounds inserted into the contract for the fight along with a $1 million per pound weight penalty for the fight.
Make no mistake; those were obviously put into the contract to make sure that Canelo would have an advantage in this fight. They can say those things were put into the contract to make the fight fairer, but I don’t believe that for a second. Those were clearly put in the contract that there would be fewer chances for Chavez Jr. to win the fight due to him being weakened enough so that Canelo can beat him. You have to realize how important Canelo is for Golden Boy Promotions. He’s their top money fighter. Canelo is their only money fighter right now.
If Canelo beats trounced by Chavez Jr. tonight, it could be game over for Canelo, because the boxing public might decide the novelty has worn off of seeing Canelo blast apart over-matched opposition like Amir Khan, Liam Smith, James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo. Chavez Jr’s name fits in with those fighters from yesteryear. The casual boxing fans probably don’t know that Chavez Jr. is a fighter from yesteryear like Kirkland and Angulo.
They probably think Chavez Jr. is a world champion or at least the best fighter at 168. He’s not. Chavez Jr. might not even be the 10th best fighter in the 168 lb. division, but he still has a chance to beat Canelo because he’s clearly not the best at 160. Canelo is a catchweight, who has been carefully matched by Golden Boy through most of his career. Canelo has had 3 true fights during his career against Floyd Mayweather Jr., Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara, and he deserved losses in 2 out of those fights in my opinion.
“These are the types of fights that take you to a whole new level in terms of your boxing abilities inside the ring. It makes you obviously train harder,” said Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya to espn.com. “It gives you that extra motivation. If you want to go run 10 miles today, well, guess what — you’re going to run 11 or 12, because you’re just so amped, because this fight is so personal.”
Chavez Jr. has been seriously overlooked in this fight by a lot of boxing fans and odds-makers, as they forget that the man has tons of experience and has 50 victories during his long career. Chavez Jr. almost knocked out a prime Sergio Martinez despite not having trained at all for the fight other than doing some basic workouts at his rented house. That wasn’t a training camp that Chavez Jr. had with trainer Freddie Roach for the Martinez fight. The 2012 version of Sergio Martinez would clown Canelo in my opinion.
I don’t think it would be a fight. Martinez was such a good fighter back then. Chavez Jr. went the full distance with him, and almost knocked him out in the 12th round. I don’t think Canelo would do that. He would have been picked apart by the pot shots by Martinez. I think it would have been an even more one-sided win for Sergio Martinez than it was for Mayweather in his win over Canelo.
You ever wonder why Golden Boy didn’t push to have Canelo fight Sergio in 2012. It’s pretty obvious. They had to know that Martinez was the best fighter in the middleweight division. Putting Canelo in with Sergio at that time would have been a disaster. To Chavez Jr’s credit, he took the Martinez fight and did it without a real training camp, and he STILL almost beat him. That shows you the kind of talent that Chavez Jr. has going for him.
Chavez Jr. has beaten some good fighters during his career like Andy Lee, Sebastian Zbik, Peter Manfredo Jr., Brian Vera and Marco Antonio Rubio. I think he would beat Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara, and Miguel Cotto.
The size of the 6’1” Chavez Jr. tonight is going to make him look like a giant next to the 5’8” Canelo. Most boxing fans don’t realize how much bigger Chavez Jr. is than Canelo. It’s a tremendous size advantage that Chavez Jr. is going to have. It’s not just Chavez Jr’s height. It’s his frame. He’s got a light heavyweight sized frame, and he’s going against a miniature middleweight. Canelo weighs a lot, but he’s not a big guy. He’s just a short fighter that has dined on a lot of smaller and older fighters that have been put in with him.
“I’m building up, because come [Saturday], I’m going to let it all out,” said Canelo.
Canelo, 26, is drunk with overconfidence going into tonight’s Chavez Jr. Canelo has had too many over-the-hill older fighters matched up against him, and he now seems drunk on power, and thinking that it’s going to be another cherry pick for him. I think it’s going to go badly for the softly matched redhead Mexican star tonight. I’m predicting a knockout win for Chavez Jr.