By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) says he wasn’t bothered by the power of unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) in his 12 round majority decision loss to him last night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo wound up on the losing end of the scores 114-114, 116-112 and 117-111. The 114-114 score from judge C.J. Ross has got to be one of the most laughable scores you’ll ever see in the sport.
Canelo said to ESPN Deportes “He is a fast fighter, more so when he’s hitting lightly. His punches are not powerful, so it makes them faster. It didn’t let me do the work that I thought I needed and we didn’t know how to counter that.”
Canelo was fighting a welterweight after all, and not a junior middleweight/light heavyweight, so it’s not as if he should have expected Mayweather to punch like Gennady Golovkin. Mayweather weighed only 150 lbs. last night, and he woke up in the morning on Saturday weighing only 146 lbs.
There wasn’t much Canelo could do. He wasn’t weighing in the 170s like he did in his last fight, so his power didn’t have much of an effect on Mayweather even when he landed cleanly. Despite being a huge fighter, Canelo doesn’t have Julian Jackson type power. He’s more of a heavy handed fighter who needs to land a massive amount of shots before he can get a stoppage.
If Mayweather had stood in one place like many of the other opponents that Golden Boy Promotions has matched the 23-year-old Canelo to build up his record, Mayweather would have been in a world of hurt last night. He couldn’t fight that kind of fight against a bruiser like Canelo, so he did the right thing by boxing his ears off. Mayweather clowned Canelo with speed and showed him what it was like to fight a master boxer, and Canelo couldn’t do anything because Mayweather wouldn’t stand still like the other guys he’d fought.
You can expect Canelo to have a lot of problems in the future in facing guys now that Mayweather has created the blueprint in how to beat him. Golden Boy is going to have to be really careful with Canelo if they don’t want him to end up as just another contender at 154.
Canelo has it even worse in that he’s getting bigger now and eventually he won’t be able to make 154 anymore. That means Canelo will have to mix it up with the likes of Gennady Golovkin and Peter Quillin at middleweight, and I don’t think Canelo can beat either of those guys.
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