(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Ricky Hatton is picking Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) to top WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) on September 14th in their mega fight.
Hatton likes the red-haired Canelo as a fighter, but he sees him as fitting the same aggressive style as past Mayweather victims and he doesn’t think Canelo will be able to win because of that.
Hatton doesn’t think Canelo’s size advantage will be enough for him to pull off the win, because Mayweather won’t be standing still in front of him the way that most of Canelo’s mostly poor opponents have done during his 8 year pro career.
Hatton said to FighthubTV, “I’d have to say Mayweather [will win]. Mayweather likes people who are aggressive, he likes when they come at him…he’s beaten bigger men like Oscar De La Hoya before. I figure he’s got too much hand speed and timing for Canelo…I don’t think he’ll [Mayweather] be there to be hit, he’ll move, use his speed.”
Canelo really didn’t fight in an aggressive manner in his last fight against WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout last April, but then again Canelo didn’t have to because the judges were giving him almost every round regardless that he was being outworked.
With the open scoring for the fight, it put Canelo in a position where all he had to do was sit back and play defense for 8 rounds, making sure he landed at least 3 hard shots in every round to win the fight.
I didn’t think Canelo did enough to win more 3 rounds, but the three judges that worked the fight were obviously impressed with his performance enough to give him the win. Canelo did a lot of counter punching in that fight, and he was able to do that because he was sitting on a fat lead after the 4th and 8th rounds with the open scoring.
Trout was desperate and had to fight in an aggressive manner, which is out of character for his normal fighting style. This made it easy for Canelo because all he had to do was sit and wait on Trout. Canelo won’t be able to that against Mayweather, however, because there won’t be open scoring for the fight, and Mayweather isn’t going to push the fight at Canelo like Trout was forced to do after seeing the lopsided scoring that the judges had for his fight.
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