By Jeff Aranow: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will be coming into this Saturday’s fight against former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. as the favorite when he gets inside the ring at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is a match-up between an experienced middleweight in Canelo and a big super middleweight in Chavez Jr.
Canelo has fought most of his career at welterweight and junior middleweight. He’s only now moving up to the middleweight division, but he’s still never fought at the full weight for the 160 pound division. We don’t know how Canelo will react fighting guys that haven’t been melted down to 154 or 155. The weight limit for Saturday’s Canelo-Chavez Jr. will be at 164.5 lbs. This could help or hurt Canelo depending on how he deals with fighting at a higher weight against a good fighter with size and power. Chavez Jr. isn’t rated as high as some of the top super middleweights in the division like James DeGale, but he’s still a threat to beating Canelo because of his size and his pedigree.
“This fight has created a lot of passion in me, a lot of enthusiasm, and I think that that’s the difference in this,” said Chavez Jr. about his fight against the 26-year-old Canelo. ”Excited about this fight, and I think that you’re going to see a different Julio that’s excited,” said Chavez Jr.
A new Chavez Jr. will be a surprise to a lot of boxing fans, most of all to Canelo. We haven’t heard a lot about what Chavez Jr’s sparring sessions have been like in preparation for this fight. But if Chavez Jr. is able to get back to his old form between 2010 and 2012, he could be a very dangerous fight for Canelo on Saturday. Canelo hasn’t fought with a lot of sluggers with size and power since he turned pro 12 years ago. Canelo’s last opponent Liam Smith was able to put hands on him in their fight on September 17.
Chavez Jr. could take the steam out of Canelo’s offensive attack if he lands a lot of hard body shots on Saturday. Chavez Jr. looked plenty strong in his win over Dominik Britisch last December in beating him by a 10 round unanimous decision. Chavez Jr. didn’t take the full stops out of his offense in that fight, but he still looked very good for a fighter who’d been out of the ring for a year. Few fighters can come off of a long layoff like that and look as good as Chavez Jr. did.
Chavez Jr. will have his work cut out for him on Saturday night though, as Canelo is the faster, and the more skilled fighter of the two. Canelo is viewed by a lot of boxing fans as the best fighter in the middleweight division today. Canelo has an excellent skillset, and he seems to be getting better with each fight he takes. Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions believe him to be capable of winning this fight against Chavez Jr. otherwise they wouldn’t have made the fight in the first place. They don’t make fights involving fighters that they believe capable of beating Canelo unless it’s a fight that he requests. Canelo has done that a couple of times during his career in requesting that Golden Boy match him against Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara against their best interests.
Luckily for Golden Boy, Canelo was up to the mark in beating both of those fighters by hard fought 12 round decisions. One fighter that Canelo hasn’t pushed to fight is Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, and Golden Boy hasn’t pushed for that fight either.
If Canelo wins on Saturday night, he could wind up facing Golovkin in September. That’s a fight that all boxing wants to see right now, and it’s expected to bring in a lot of money to Canelo and his promoters. Canelo would be insisting on taking the lion’s share of the revenue for the fight. If Golovkin doesn’t agree to let Canelo get the bigger cut of the money, then the fight won’t be happening. It’s as simple as that.
There’s a real, true rivalry, and on Saturday night, people are going to see firsthand this rivalry, how real it is,” said Chavez Jr . “Obviously, we’re going to show it inside the ring,” said Chavez Jr.
There is a lot of animosity between them. We haven’t seen it so much from Chavez Jr’s angle, but Canelo seems to be really angry with him for some of the comments he’s made over the years about his career. Chavez Jr. thinks Canelo has been spoon fed a lot of smaller and older fighters by Golden Boy Promotions during his career. Chavez Jr. thinks that Canelo has been marketed and steered into winnable fights to make him look better than he actually is. Chavez Jr. points out that Canelo hasn’t fought guys like Golovkin and other top fighters from his weight classes.
Canelo been moved around by Golden Boy Promotions and put in with a lot of fighters that either didn’t have the size or the youth to beat him. Chavez Jr. uses Shane Mosley and Amir Khan as examples of over-matched smaller fighters that Golden Boy has matched against him instead of fighters from his own weight class.
“It has been said that in boxing that that’s an important factor, that the weight and the bigger person is always going to have the advantage,” said Chavez Jr. about his size advantage over the smaller Canelo. “That I think is true. But I think with this fight, I’m just focusing on staying strong, making the weight the right way so that I’m in there and able to compete at that level.”
The weight is going to be a crucial factor on Saturday night for this fight, as Chavez Jr. is coming down in weight 3 ½ pounds from his normal weight of 168 for his fights at super middleweight. Chavez Jr. hasn’t proven that he can make the weight for his own division, and now he’s being asked to come down a catch-weight of 164.5lbs for this fight, and it’s going to be tough on him if he hasn’t taken the fight off the right way during training camp. What’s good news for Chavez Jr. is the fact that he’s had great trainers in helping him take the weight off in Memo Heredia and Nacho Beristain for this fight.
If Chavez Jr. loses this fight on Saturday night, it won’t be due to the lack of quality training he’s had in the run up to the fight. Canelo hasn’t been hit by a big fighter like Chavez Jr. during his career. This is going to be a new experience for him. It’ll be a good test to show whether he’ll be able to take the heavy shots from Genndy “GGG” Golovkin when the two of them face each other in September or whenever they do get around to fighting each other. Chavez Jr. is a different type of puncher though. He uses what some boxing fans would call the Mexican style of fighting, which involves a lot of body shots. Canelo will need to be able to take those punches. It would be terrible news for Golden Boy if Chavez Jr. is able to send Canelo down to defeat before they’ve had the chance to put him in with Golovkin.
