by Bob Smith: Let us be honest with ourselves: Arturo Gatti was an excellent fighter who was also one of the most courageous in recent memory, and he is also a boxing hall of famer with three fight of the year candidates to his credit, and is more or less a real-life incarnation of Rocky.
However, when he entered the Ring against Floyd Mayweather, despite the fact that Gatti was by far the fan favorite and boxing with the home crowd advantage, Mayweather completely dominated Gatti and ended up with a six round stoppage victory.
In an similar way, Canelo is a very respectable and popular boxer with a tremendous fan base (it is his fan base more than anything else that landed him this fight) and while not deserving of the #10 position on the Golden Boy pound for pound list, he did win several round against Austin Trout in his recent fight, and has shown recent improvement.
By mentioning that he won several rounds, I mean he would have won those rounds had the fight been held outside of Texas and without open scoring. He does possess one punch knockout power and he is a world class boxer, but I argue Adrien Broner has a better talent to hype ratio than he does.
What then will be the outcome of his clash with Mayweather, other than the massive enrichment of both fighters? Canelo will be exposed as a growing and learning fighter (this is putting it charitably) who while still possessing power, lacks the stamina, speed, footwork, and combinations necessary to exert his will on a technically superior opponent.
Though Canelo does have more power than Pacquaio or Prince Nasseem, either fighter would have been much more dangerous to Mayweather (at welterweight or lightweight respectively) because their punches come from awkward and unusual angles and with blazing speed.
If I were Mayweather I would have insisted on a hydration clause because any punch, even a glancing one, from a world class 172 pound fighter is difficult to take from a 152 pound fighter. However, Canelo will unfortunately land very few of his powerful punches and those he does land will be ones without momentum behind them.
The prediction issue for me is either Mayweather by unanimous decision or Mayweather by KO – if Canelo goes all out and tried to get a KO punch on Mayweather, he opens himself up to tiring out quickly and being knocked down several times or being knocked out himself by Mayweather’s blazing speed and underrated power. In the end, though, I think that Canelo is well coached enough to simply lose each round by a wide margin.
I really hope that Floyd’s haters will give him more credit when he dominates Canelo in the ring as he did Gatti in years past. No disrespect to Gatti or Canelo, but Mayweather is simply in another league, and I don’t believe that either can do much better against him that Juan Manuel Marquez, a superior fighter to both of them, did.
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