(Photo credit: Alma Montiel) By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya thinks he knows the key to WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez beating Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their fight on September 14th. De La Hoya believes all that Canelo will need to do in order to beat Mayweather is to jab him over and over again for 12 rounds and that’ll lead the 22-year-old red-haired Mexican fighter to victory.
No doubt De La Hoya has given Canelo the secret already, because already said that De La Hoya has been giving him tips on what Mayweather doesn’t like when fighting.
De La Hoya said to Michael Woods at the boxingchannel “I keep saying this over and over again and it’s so easy – jab; three letters.”
It’s pretty clear that De La Hoya feels that Canelo can win because of his jab due to De La Hoya’s success in throwing his own jabs in his loss to Mayweather in 2007. De La Hoya fought well in the first 6 rounds when he was throwing nothing but jabs, but once he started to slug with Mayweather in the 2nd half of the fight, then Mayweather took over and boxed his way to a 12 round split decision.
That strategy won’t work for Canelo because I always had the feeling that Mayweather was toying with De La Hoya in the first six rounds of their fight out of respect for him. I got the impression watching that fight that Mayweather carried the past his prime De La Hoya in the first part of the fight, and that it wasn’t until the second half that Mayweather got serious and totally dominated De La Hoya.
I don’t think Canelo aping De La Hoya by jabbing isn’t going to work against Mayweather. If that’s De La Hoya and Canelo’s secret plan for beating Mayweather then they’re going to be a lot of sad Canelo fans on September 14th because that’s a plan doomed for failure. Canelo isn’t going to beat Mayweather by jabbing, even if Canelo could jab for 12 rounds, and I don’t’ think he can.
Canelo looks tired when he throws more than a handful of jabs in each round and he ends up stopping and resting. He’s not all of a sudden going to discover stamina at the age of 22 that will allow him to jab for three minutes for the first time in his career.
The stamina just isn’t there for Canelo, and it probably never will be. At 22, you’re supposed to be at your best already in the stamina department, but Canelo fights like someone in their 40s. He can’t fight hard without gassing.
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