By Dan Ambrose: WBC heavyweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) has what many boxing fans see as the perfect opponent for him to showcase his skills against in Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) for their fight on May 7 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Canelo is bigger, stronger and younger than Khan. The belief by many fans is Canelo will simply wall though Khan’s lighter punches in the early rounds until he eventually lands something hard enough to stop him. If Khan gets hurt, he won’t be able to keep the stronger Canelo off of him to survive the round.
Khan doesn’t buy into any of that. He’s seen a lot of old fights from the past where the smaller, faster fighter was able to beat the bigger guy, and he thinks he’ll be able to repeat history on May 7 by using his quickness to out-box the younger but definitely more flat-footed Canelo.
“I might not be as strong as him walking into this fight, but I’m going to be faster and have better skill,” said Khan to irishmirror.ie. “I have better footwork. I’ve seen it happen in history, where you have a smaller guy who’s gone into the ring as the underdog and beaten the heavier guy. So, it’s happened before and it can happen again.”
That would be a big surprise to a lot of people if Khan can beat Canelo to win his WBC middleweight title. Khan isn’t too sure about holding onto the WBC title if he can unseat Canelo, because that would mean that he’d need to fight interim WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin in his next fight before he could fight Canelo for a second time as part of the rematch clause Canelo has in the contact.
Khan would likely love to fight Canelo twice, but a fight against Golovkin might be a different story. He’s too much trouble for what he’s worth. Khan wants to move back down to welterweight to fight WBC champion Danny Garcia for his title.
Canelo looked good at times in his last fight against Miguel Cotto last November when Cotto was standing and trying to fight him. However, Canelo struggled when Cotto used movement and fought a more disciplined fight. Canelo definitely gave up rounds to the 35-year-old Cotto. The only reason Cotto ended up losing the fight is because he wasted a lot of time trying to slug with Canelo instead of sticking to the game plan that his trainer Freddie Roach had come up with for him.
Khan can beat Canelo if he doesn’t get angry after he gets nailed by something and tries to get back at him. The crowd is obviously going to be a pro-Canelo crowd at the T-Mobile Arena, and they’re going to be cheering each time Canelo lands a hard shot.
If Khan can stay cool the way that Floyd Mayweather Jr. stayed composed when he was nailed by Canelo’s occasional big shots, then he can focus on using the ring to out-box him. Khan cannot fall into the same trap that Cotto did by veering off the game plan and trying to slug with Canelo, because that’s his game and he’s not going to beat him in that department.