By Sean Jones: Trainer Andre Rozier thinks Saul Canelo Alvarez could get stopped in his fight next month against WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (34-3-1, 29 KOs) on November 2. Rozier says he’s heard what a lot of people have said about Canelo (52-1, 35 KOs) knocking out Kovalev, but he points out that he hasn’t proven that he can knock out a middleweight.
Canelo-Kovalev will be fighting on DAZN on November 2 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Rozier doesn’t count former WBA ‘regular’ super middleweight champion Rocky Fielding as being a true indication of Canelo’s power, because he sees him as “marshmallow” level fighter. At middleweight, Canelo FAILED to knockout Gennady Golovkin in two tries and Daniel Jacobs. He also couldn’t stop Miguel Cotto, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., and Erislandy Lara in their catchweight fights.
Canelo might get stopped by Kovalev says Rozier
“I don’t like it for Canelo. Everybody is telling me that Canelo is going to be hurting a man that is 195 pounds in the ring in Kovalev. He hasn’t hurt a middleweight yet in the ring,” said Sergiy Derevyanchenko’s trainer Andre Rozier about the November 2 fight between Canelo and Sergey Kovalev.
“And we’re not talking about that marshmallow that came from England [Rocky Fielding]. We’re not talking about him. We’re talking about the middleweights that he fought. He’s [Canelo] going to have a tough, tough time, albeit to the point where he might get stopped against a bigger, stronger, jab-driven right hand concussive Kovalev,” said Rozier.
If Canelo can’t get close often enough to land his body shots, he’s going to be in for it. Canelo is good at moving his head to avoid power shots, but he can’t get out of the way of jabs. He duck some of them, but not guys with a steady jab like Kovalev. Even Gennady Golovkin and Austin Trout were consistently nailing Canelo with jabs.
If the fight goes 12 rounds, it’ll be a tough one for Canelo. He’ll have to eat a lot of hard shots to see the final bell. Given Canelo’s popularity, if he’s standing at the end, he likely will win the fight. Where Canelo could have problems is if he gets too ambitious, and tries to score a knockout. If Canelo gets greedy, he could run into something and wind up like Jean Pascal. That’s a guy that is tougher than Canelo, and he was twice knocked out by Kovalev.
Rozier wants Spence vs. Porter rematch
“It was a great fight. They should do it again. It was close, very close,” said Rozier about last Saturday’s Errol Spence Jr. vs. Shawn Porter fight. “That little faulty knockdown. That’s what I call it, a faulty knockdown.
“A little graze of the hand on the canvas, that’s all it was. I think they should do it again. It was a fantastic fight. I don’t want to see it,” said Rozier about a fight between Spence and 40-year-old Manny Pacquiao.
“It doesn’t make sense. Pacquiao at this point, we’re talking about what could happen to him. It doesn’t make sense. Let’s not do it. I don’t want to see him going out like that,” said Rozier.
Rozier makes it sound like the 11th round knockdown that Spence scored was a cheap one. If you saw how the left hook from Spence whip-lashed Porter’s head, you can’t draw any other conclusion but it being a legitimate knockdown. Porter’s lucky that Spence didn’t follow up with an additional big left hook in the same round. It’s doubtful that Porter would have been able to take another left hook from Spence.
Manny Pacquiao probably won’t fight Spence. The 40-year-old Filipino star is expected to share the ring with Mikey Garcia next in 2020. That’s a winnable fight for Pacquiao. It’s not a great one, but he’ll get a nice payday.
