By Chris Williams: Well, it looks like Golden Boy Promotions is going to be matching unbeaten welterweight contender Saul Alvarez (34-0-1, 26 KO’s) up with another 39-year-old fighter. In this case, it will be former International Boxing Federation light welterweight champion Lovemore N’dou (48-11-2, 31 KO’s), who is clearly on the downside of his career and perhaps six or seven years past his best. The fight will be taking place at Xcaret, Quintana Roo, Mexico, and will be scheduled for 12 rounds.
Frankly, I hate this fight. I already saw Alvarez beat a 39-year-old in his last fight when he stopped former World Boxing Council (WBC) welterweight champion Carlos Baldomir in the 6th round on September 18th. Alvarez won the fight but showed some of the worst defense I think I’ve ever seen from a fighter before. I know he’s young at 20, but he doesn’t seem to be getting any better and I’d be willing to be in four or five years, defense is still going to be a huge flaw for him.
Alvarez can punch, but he doesn’t much harder than the other welterweights and his hand speed isn’t exceptional. All in all, I think he’s vastly overrated and likely to be one of those fighters that probably won’t live up to the huge expectations. I think Alvarez will always be a huge star in Mexico, similar to Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., but I don’t see his actual talent matching his popularity or even coming close. The guy is just too wide on defense and doesn’t really have that much more in the other areas to get excited about his potential.
I do think Alvarez will beat this old guy N’dou, but look who they’re matching him with. I bet they’ll still be putting him in with old guys next year and the year after. The reason I see this happening is because Alvarez will keep looking poor or mediocre in his fights against B level opposition and they’ll want to try and fix this by matching him with even more B level fighters in hopes that his flaws can be taken care of. I don’t think they will. I see this as an eye-hand coordination problem in terms of his poor defense. He just doesn’t seem to pick up punches well and his reaction times are slow.
I see Alfredo Angulo as being better than Alvarez and I think James Kirkland would destroy him. The same goes for Mike Jones. Alvarez is a decent fighter, but I don’t see him as anymore than a future paper title holder or just the holder of the WBC junior middleweight title, which is the title that that Alvarez currently holds.
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