(Picture credit: Hogan Photos) By Dan Ambrose: After being schooled badly by Floyd Mayweather Jr last September, you’d have thought that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (43-1-, 31 KOs) would have learned his lesson by now that he can’t afford to try and box slick fighters like Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KO’s), but that’s what the 23-year-old is hinting that he’ll be doing on Saturday night in their middleweight pay-per-view match on Showtime from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Canelo said “How will I beat him? With speed, movement and combinations.”
Speed is the way last way that the slow-footed, 170+ pound Canelo is going to beat a fast Cuban fighter like Lara, and if that’s the only plan that he and his trainer Chepo Reynoso have come up with in the last two months of training for this fight then Canelo is probably heading for a serious clowning on Saturday night.
With the only thing going for him in this fight is his power and weight advantage, Canelo has to cut off the ring, force Lara to fight, and not let him move around the ring. Canelo will likely be coming into the fight as a light heavyweight on Saturday night weighing in the 175 pound range. For him not to use that weight would be insane, because it’s his main asset.
In looking at how sickly and starved Canelo appeared at the final press conference with Lara on Thursday, it seems obvious Canelo will rehydrate 20 pounds from the 155 pound catch-weight. As drained looking as Canelo looked yesterday, I think we could see him wear down quickly on Saturday night once this fight goes past the 4th round.
That’s why Canelo must use his size advantage to try and crush Lara quickly in the first 4 rounds, because once it goes into the second half of the fight, we’re likely going to see Canelo fade badly and turn into a one punch at a time fighter that he’s been in his last several fights.
Canelo is stubbornly resisting the notion that he should move up to middleweight or preferably super middleweight, but his body is going to force him to do it sooner or later with him gassing out after 4 rounds from now on.
Canelo said “He’s a fighter that moves very well. He has very tight defense, but the thing that doesn’t move well is his feet, his legs. We know his style; he has a very difficult style. But we’ve prepared to break down that style. We worked for a difficult style, for a southpaw. Without a doubt we had the right sparring partners.”
What Canelo says doesn’t make a lot of sense. If Lara moves well, then how is it that his feet and leg don’t move well? The fact is Lara’s legs and feet do move well otherwise he wouldn’t move well. I wonder if the weight draining process is starting to cloud Canelo’s thinking process as he drains down to make the 155 pound limit. It’s got to be difficult for him to get down to 155 as big as he is.
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