Merchant: I won’t be surprised if Canelo loses to Trout

By Boxing News - 03/21/2013 - Comments

Web-P3142309By Dan Ambrose: Former HBO analyst Larry Merchant says he wouldn’t be surprised in the least if WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) gets beaten next month by WBA champion Austin Trout (26-0, 14 KO’s) on April 20th in their Texas based fight.

Merchant understands fully why Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions were dead set against putting their fighter in with Trout because he’s a clever boxer and there’s a good chance that Canelo ends up getting beaten in this fight.

Merchant said to esnewsreporting.com “I like Canelo…It’s a dangerous fight, and if he lost it wouldn’t be the biggest shock in the world.”

In other words, Merchant sees a lot of things he likes about Canelo’s fighting style, but Trout has the skills to negate every one of Canelo’s positives and make him look like the flat-footed fighter that he is.

I think Canelo is a good fighter in the traditional sense against guys that can’t move around the ring, and are either small or older than him. Canelo is not someone that is going to excel against when facing someone from his own weight class that can move around the ring and elude his bull-like charges the way that guys like Trout and Erislandy Lara can.

If you give Canelo a fighter that comes right at him like Kermit Cintron, Josesito Lopez, Matthew Hatton, and Alfonso Gomez, he’s going to do incredibly well. He eats those guys up, just as the middleweight division’s version of Canelo, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., also does well against guys that come at him or stand in one place so that he can use his power, size and body punching to pulverize them.

Trout isn’t one of those limited fighters, and he doesn’t fight in a dumb manner. So other words, Merchant can like Canelo all he wants, but he better be ready to have his eyes opened for him on April 20th because there’s a better than average chance that Canelo is going to get exposed by Trout in this fight.



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