Atlas: Canelo steals a decision over Mayweather

By Boxing News - 09/14/2013 - Comments

canelo94By Dan Ambrose: ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas is picking WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) to steal a close decision over Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) tonight in their mega fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. Atlas believes that Mayweather will make the mistake of focusing too much on his defense and not enough on his offense, and this will allow the 23-year-old Canelo to remain in the fight long enough to steal rounds by being the busier fighter.

Atlas thinks Canelo’s work will impress the judges enough to get win unless Mayweather remembers to focus on his offensive as well as his defense.

Atlas told ESPN “He’s [Mayweather] going to play it safe, he’s going to play it smart, he’s going to do just enough to win. I think that’s going to allow a window for Canelo to hang out, to stay in the fight like an underdog in any other sport, to hang around when Mayweather goes defensive too much. He [Canelo] has a chance to outwork him, and maybe steal rounds with these judges here and at the end steal a decision. Canelo steals a decision over Floyd.”

I think Atlas is focusing more on the Mayweather of 2007 than the Mayweather of 2013, because he’s a lot smarter now, and he doesn’t just give rounds away by focusing on defense. Yes, Mayweather did give rounds away against Oscar De La Hoya in 2007 by being too defensive, but he’s changed his fighting style since then and he’s just as much offensive than he is defensive.

If you look at Mayweather’s wins over Robert Guerrero and Miguel Cotto, it wasn’t a situation where Mayweather was just focusing on defense. The same goes for Mayweather’s wins over Shane Mosley and Juan Manuel Marquez. Mayweather threw punches as well defended against them.

What’s going to make it easy for Mayweather to keep his offense in gear is the aggressiveness of Canelo and the loud noise the crowd will be making. Canelo is going to be giving Mayweather all kinds of opportunities to land his counter shots by him coming forward and trying to mix it up a lot. The fans will motivate Mayweather to dominate Canelo as well, because Mayweather fights really well in front of loud crowds, and this is going to be a very loud crowd because the MGM will be filled with Canelo fans.

Mayweather will be motivated to want to clown the orange-haired Canelo in front of his own fans to show that this kid isn’t in the same league as him. Mayweather already has a reason to want to make Canelo look bad tonight due to Canelo snubbing Mayweather’s good will offer to hold the new WBC gold title belt at the weigh-in yesterday. What Canelo did was similar to someone refusing to shake your hand. Believe me, Mayweather won’t have forgotten that move by Canelo, and he’s going to look to clown him badly for that.



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