By Dan Ambrose: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) sees WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) as just one of many of his legions of fans. I sees the young 23-year-old red-haired Canelo as someone that has been influenced by his boxing style and tries to copy parts of it.
Mayweather said to Yahoo Sports, “He’s a fan and he tries to box like a little bit. Of course, I know he’s a fan, but I can’t take anything away from him. I can’t do nothing but respect him.”
Obviously, Canelo can’t use all parts of Mayweather’s fighting style because he lacks the hand speed, slim built, defensive, reflexes, footwork and over all talent, but he does seem to be trying to use the shoulder roll defense.”
The problem with a fighter trying to use another fighters’ style is it rarely works. When you look at Canelo’s fights a couple of years ago, he had a different style of fighting, but in the past few years, he seems to have adopted a lot of the things that Mayweather Jr. uses in the ring.
Canelo hasn’t faced any real quality opposition that was at his weight and still in their prime other than Austin Trout, and his win over him last April still has a many people thinking that it a bogus victory. Canelo’s fans think he won; while many neutral fans think Trout should have won.
Canelo’s shoulder roll defense didn’t work too well against Trout, as he was able to land a lot of jabs and body shots in outworking Canelo. Had Trout been a little busier, he would have put the judges on the spot to where they would have really looked bad in giving Canelo the victory. As it was, Trout dominated 10 of the 12 rounds of the fight and showed that Canelo’s defense needs more work.
It would be better for Canelo to go back to his old style of fighting, which was a lot like the way Julio Cesar Chavez Jr fights. That was a better style for Canelo and more suited towards his heavy body type.
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