By Jeff Aranow: IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook has every reason in the world to want Amir Khan to lose his fight this Saturday night against WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez due to Khan having turned down fight offers from him and his promoter Eddie Hearn for the last several years including recently.
Brook still is open enough to say he thinks the 29-year-old Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) has a chance of pulling off an upset against Canelo (46-1-1, 32 KOs) if he fights the perfect fight and doesn’t get caught up trying to slug with the Mexican fighter.
Brook still thinks Canelo will likely win the fight based on his size and power advantage in the fight, but he thinks Khan can possibly pull off an upset if he boxed Canelo the entire fight and avoids getting into any exchanges.
Canelo will be there to be hit for Khan, but he’s also going to be there trying to take his head off with each shot he throws. Canelo knows Khan is susceptible to big shots, and this is going to encourage Canelo to load up more in this fight than he normally does.
“If you’re the supreme boxer, Floyd Mayweather has already shown that size doesn’t really matter when that bell rings. The problem is that Khan is no Mayweather and he likes to exchange too much,” said Brook to ringtv.com. , “Although it’s a tricky fight, I think he’ll [Canelo] find the big punch and that’ll be all she wrote. He’s a young champion and a very proud Mexican, so he’ll be coming with bad intentions,” said Brook.
Khan is definitely not in Mayweather’s class, and he doesn’t have the same ability to jab at a distance that he has as well. Khan gets hit even when he’s on the outside. If Khan can mainly jab and move, he’ll limit the power shots that Canelo will land. The thing with Khan is he tends to get greedy by trying to do too much in his fights in throwing risky combinations and big power shots. Against a counter puncher like Canelo, that could be fatal. Canelo will be bulked up after he rehydrates from the 155lb catch-weight for this fight, and he’ll be looking to put everything he has in each hard left hook that he throws.
“We’ll see how he [Canelo] uses his presence to deal with a fighter who moves now. Has he learned from the loss to Mayweather? Will he be lighter on his feet? I think Khan has a real chance but I still believe he loses the fight,” said Brook.
Canelo has fought only one fighter with fast feet since his loss to Mayweather in 2013 and that was against Erislandy Lara in 2014. Canelo didn’t do so well against Lara. Canelo could have lost the fight if Lara had thrown a few more punches. Canelo’s other fights since the controversial win over Lara was against Alfredo Angulo, James Kirkland and Miguel Cotto. Kirkland and Angulo didn’t move at all, and it was easy for Canelo to win.
Canelo had problems against Cotto when he used movement and boxed him. Cotto lost his chance to win the fight by spending too much time mixing it up with Canelo rather than using movement like his trainer Freddie Roach had planned for him.