Hatton predicts Mayweather victory over Canelo on Saturday

By Boxing News - 09/09/2013 - Comments

floyd01234By Dan Ambrose: Former Floyd Mayweather Jr. victim Ricky Hatton is predicting a victory for Mayweather Jr. over WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez this Saturday, September 14th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Hatton sees Mayweather’s defensive skills, hand speed and his ability to move around the ring as being too much for the red-haired Canelo handle in this fight. Hatton does think Canelo will ultimately be the toughest fight of Mayweather Jr’s career, but he won’t be good enough to beat him.

Hatton told the BBC Sport as quoted by Fightnews.com “Alvarez is younger, bigger and stronger but Floyd will have the speed and the movement to keep out of the way. He will be Floyd’s toughest fight, because Floyd is getting on a bit…Floyd will make Alvarez miss.”

I’m not so sure that Canelo will be the toughest fight of Mayweather Jr’s career. Things were looking bad for Canelo in the first four rounds of his fight against Austin Trout last April until the judges scored were announced with them giving Canelo almost every round.

Trout was dominating Canelo with his jab, defense and movement before the out of whack scores were announced. I had Trout winning the first four rounds easily. Canelo looked frustrated and upset with his ability to land anything. If you saw that fight you’ll remember that Canelo couldn’t lay a glove on Trout in the first part of the fight.

It was only after the wild judges scores were announced that Trout was forced to fight Canelo’s style by coming at him and being more aggressive. Trout didn’t have the power to fight Canelo like that, and if he had stuck with his normal fighting style, he would have out-boxed Canelo.

Mayweather Jr. is a lot harder to hit than Trout, and much more skilled a fighter. Canelo can only win if Mayweather Jr. comes at him like Trout did, but Mayweather Jr. won’t do that. He’s not crazy. That would be like taking a small ship and ramming it into the shoreline.

It would be an insane move on Mayweather Jr’s part to try and beat a fighter 20+ pounds heavier than him by choosing to slug it out hoping to get the better of him that way. Canelo is too big for Mayweather Jr. to beat in that kind of fight, so he’s not going to even try it. Yes, if Mayweather Jr. weighed as much as Canelo of if he was the one with 20 lb. weight advantage over Canelo, I’m sure Mayweather Jr. would gladly go toe-to-toe with him. But then again, I don’t think Canelo would be so eager to fight Mayweather Jr. if he was as big as him and especially not if he had a 20 lb. weight advantage. If Canelo isn’t showing interested in fighting Gennady Golovkin, who weighs exactly the same as him, there’s probably no chance of him wanting to fight Mayweather Jr. if he were bigger than he is now.

Mayweather Jr. destroyed Ricky Hatton in 2007 in stopping him in the 10th round.



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