Canelo: Mayweather mainly throws jabs and right hands; I’m planning around that

By Boxing News - 07/04/2013 - Comments

Canelo arrives(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) thinks he’s got Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) pegged in how he fights, and he’s going to be planning his strategy around what he thinks Mayweather is capable of doing at this age.

The 22-year-old Canelo says he’s noticed that Mayweather throws mostly jabs and right hands now, and he plans on working with this info to come up with the perfect plan to defeat him.

Mayweather does throw a lot of right hands and jabs, but then again so do most fighters. There’s nothing new there. However, Canelo would be making a huge mistake if he doesn’t recognize that Mayweather does throw a lot of left hooks and left hands as well. He’s not a one trick pony. Mayweather has an all-around approach to his offense and he’s pretty difficult to predict in what he’ll do in the ring.

Canelo said to Ringtv “If you really look at it, that’s [right hands and jabs] the only things he has, that’s all he does. I’m going to formulate my game plan around that.”

It looks like we’ve got a know it all Canelo here. He’s 22nd and seen it all, I guess.

Canelo shouldn’t do too much thinking for this fight because he could end up planning for the wrong thing. If anything, Canelo would be better off going into the fight without working too much one or two things because Mayweather will only adapt to whatever Canelo comes up with and render it pointless immediately.

You’d hate to see Canelo having worked himself to the bone with what he thinks is an unbeatable strategy to defeat Mayweather only to see it nullified at once. Canelo is really his youth in being foolish enough to believe that all Mayweather has going for him is his jab and right hand.

I hope for Canelo’s sake that his trainer Chepo Reynoso talks some sense into him before the fight because if he’s just blowing smoke up his backside by agreeing with the nonsense he’s talking then we’re going to see Canelo turned into another Victor Ortiz on September 14th. It was two years ago that Mayweather defeated Ortiz in September 2011 and now we could be seeing Victor Ortiz brought back to life in the form of the red-haired Canelo.

Knowing Canelo, he’ll probably try some of the things he did in his last fight against Austin Trout in terms of moving his head a lot, leaning backwards when Mayweather jabs him. However, that strategy only worked because Trout was fighting scared and mostly just throwing jabs. If that’s you’re worrying about then it’s easy to use head movement to get out of the way of the shots.

With Mayweather, though, when he throws a punch he’s going to be dead certain that’ll land. There won’t be any missing involved, and Canelo won’t have the reflexes to get out of the way of the shots. Again, this isn’t Trout that Canelo will be fighting on September 14th.



Comments are closed.