By Sean Jones: Canelo Alvarez turned 30-years-old today, and he’s still going strong in his 15-year pro career thanks to a variety of factors. Canelo’s focus on using head and upper body movement have helped preserve him.
Also, Canelo (53-1-2, 36 KOs) can give a big thanks to his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions because they’ve been careful about the type of fighters they’ve put him in with during his career.
For example, Canelo didn’t fight Gennadiy Golovkin until he was 35-years-old and showing the beginning stages of deterioration in his game. Additionally, Canelo chose to fight Rocky Fielding at 168 rather than the monster puncher David Benavidez.
Finally, when Canelo moved up to 175, he took on Sergey Kovalev instead of the lions Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol. When you’re matched like Canelo has, which is careful, you’re going to do well.
Canelo will need to take some risks to stay relevant
Now that Alvarez is calling the 168-lb division his home, he can’t afford to play it safe, fight after fight, without losing his popularity with the boxing fans. They might be willing to put up with a Rocky Fielding or Sergey Kovalev mismatch here and there, but they’re going to want to see Alvarez fight quality opposition.
If Alvarez lacks the self-confidence to mix it up the best like Beterbiev, Bivol, Benavidez, and Caleb Plant, then he might need to think of retiring.
Boxing fans are naive. They know when a fighter is cherry-picking opponents and avoiding the best in their weight classes.
We don’t know what’s in store for Canelo in the next five years of his career, but it appears he’s said goodbye permanently to the 160-pound division. What’s interesting is Canelo is still interested in fighting middleweights, even though he’s competing at 168.
Canelo fighting opposition from a division below him is something he did in the past after he moved up to 154 in 2010. After Canelo made that move to junior middleweight, he continued to face 147-pound fighters like Shane Mosley, Carlos Baldimir, and Kermit Cintron.
They had to move up to 154 to face Canelo rather than him coming down to 147. In other words, Canelo had a size advantage over them.
From 2010 to 2013, Canelo fought ten welterweights at junior middleweight rather than competing against true 154-pounders. It wasn’t until 2013 that Canelo started to face fighters from the 154-pound weight class consistently.
Canelo must face the young lions
There are a lot of talented younger fighters at 168 that are targeting Canelo, and they’re hoping they’ll agree to face him at some point. We’re talking about guys like David Benavidez, Caleb Plant, and Aidos Yerbossynuly. If Canelo chooses to bypass those young lions, it’s going to look odd at some point.
Alvarez started his career in 2005. During that time, he’s fought some of the best in the sport, albeit when many of them were already past their primes.
These are some of the well-known guys that Alvarez fought when they were showing age:
- Sergey Kovalev
- Gennadiy Golovkin
- Shane Mosley
- Miguel Cotto
- Alfredo Angulo
- Daniel Jacobs
- Kermit Cintron
- James Kirkland
- Lovemore N’dou
- Ryan Rhodes
- Carlos Baldomir
That’s a long list, isn’t it? You could add Floyd Mayweather Jr to that list as well because he was 36 when he fought Canelo, but he still had more than enough in the tank to out-think him.
Alvarez is getting ready for his fight on September 12. The opponent is still up in the air for the Mexican star, but we do know that it’s expected to be one of these names:
- Jason Quigley
- John Ryder
- Callum Smith
Smith is by far the best of the bunch, and he’s agreed to take a pay-cut to face Canelo. Unfortunately, making less money still doesn’t guarantee that Callum gets the fight against Canelo because he may be looking for a showcase type of opponent that he can beat with ease.