By Eric Thomas: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) really did a number on WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) in beating him by a 12 round majority decision last night in Las Vegas, Nevada. Once again Mayweather beat a fighter that was using Oscar De La Hoya’s blueprint that he created in how to beat Mayweather.
The blueprint is largely centered upon the theory that if you jab Mayweather enough, you can beat him. Thus far, it’s failed five times with De La Hoya, Robert Guerrero, Shane Mosley, Victor Ortiz and Canelo all losing while attempting the strategy.
While both fighters throw almost the same amount of punches, Mayweather ended up with a 2-1 advantage in connect percentage over the 23-year-old Canelo. CompuBox had Mayweather landing 232 of 505 punches for a 46 percent connect percentage; whereas Canelo landed 117 of 526 punches for a 22 percent connect percentage.
When a fighter holds his opponent to a mere 22% connect percentage, it usually spells victory in a huge way. Canelo simply couldn’t land his best power shots last night, and the only thing Canelo had any real success with was his jabs. But you’re not going to beat a fighter like Mayweather by jabbing him.
It takes a lot more than jabs to beat Mayweather. Canelo fought hard and constantly threw jabs, but they only landed when Mayweather was in the process of landing one of his hard right hands. It didn’t prevent Mayweather from landing his right hands, and it wasn’t nearly impressive.
Mayweather will likely be facing another Golden Boy Promotions fighter next in May. The opponent will no doubt be selected from these three fighters: Danny Garcia, Devon Alexander and Amir Khan. Both Garcia and Khan like to throw a lot of jabs, so it’s likely that they’ll be agreeable to De La Hoya planting a bug in their ear to get them to jab like mad against Mayweather in hopes of becoming the first fighter to ever beat him. But like Canelo and the other Golden Boy fighters before him, it’s a blueprint stategy that’s doomed for failure.
De La Hoya is currently in a rehab center for a personal problem he’s taking care of, but by now he’s gotten the bad news about Canelo losing and his blueprint failing to work.
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