By Allan Fox: Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe says Canelo Alvarez is “not invincible,” and he believes that he’s going to come up the loser this Saturday night on November 6th when he tangles with IBF super middleweight champion Caleb Plant at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Ellerbe says he watched Canelo look terrible in his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, and he’s seen him lose rounds to many other fighters as well.
Leonard thinks that ‘Sweethands’ Plant (21-0, 12 KOs) can outbox WBA/WBC/WBO champion Canelo (56-1-2, 38 KOs) when they headline this Saturday on Showtime PPV.
This is a history-making fight between the 31-year-old Canelo and Plant, as they’ll be fighting to try and become the first undisputed super middleweight champion for the division.
There have been many undisputed champions in the past. Still, it’s become increasingly more challenging nowadays because the different and promoters and champions are resistant to facing other champs if they feel there’s a chance they could lose.
The reason Canelo has been able to get this far in his goal of becoming undisputed champion at 168 is because of his popularity and the money that his opponents can make fighting him.
If Canelo was just a great champion but didn’t bring massive money to the table for his opponents, you can argue he would have NEVER been given a chance to fight WBA champion Callum Smith, WBO belt holder Billy Joe Saunders or IBF champ Caleb Plant.
Being famous has enabled Canelo to do what other fighters can’t do because they don’t bring the money he does.
Caleb Plant can win
“Of course, he can. I’m expecting him to win the fight,” said Leonard Ellerbe to Fight Hub TV when asked if Canelo can be beaten. “I’m expecting Caleb Plant to win the fight.
“He’s a tremendous fighter, and he’s not had this kind of opportunity before, but I’m very confident he’ll rise to the occasion. That’s all a fighter needs sometimes is a platform and an opportunity.
“Canelo is a tremendous fighter. He’s one of the top fighters out there right now. People think he’s just going to walk through Caleb, and I don’t know about that,” said Ellerbe when asked about how Plant got the worst of it during the press conference when Canelo hit him during the face-off, resulting in his right eye being cut.
“Boxing don’t work like that. Rounds are scored round by round by round,” said Ellerbe. “I seen this guy [Canelo] get outboxed in rounds. What makes you think Caleb Plant doesn’t have the ability to do that when I know what he’s capable of doing?” said Ellerbe.
Alvarez, 31, is a good fighter, but he’s hampered by short arms, stamina issues, and inability to deal with a jab when his taller opponents stay on the outside.
The only thing Canelo can do is put up his high guard and try and walk them down so he can get close enough to bang them to the body with hooks or land uppercuts.
Against a slick mover like Mayweather and Erislandy Lara, Canelo was helpless. He should have lost both fights, but in the case of Erislandy, he was given a highly controversial decision.
It’s difficult to say whether Plant can win a decision against Canelo because the fight is in Las Vegas, and we’ve already seen how he’s given rounds based on him landing one or two punches.
For Plant to win, he’s going to need to make Canelo look bad to the point where the judges won’t want to put themself on the firing line by giving him the decision.
It will be difficult for Plant to win the rounds in such a lopsided way for the judges to give him the victory.
Again, Canelo has shown that he can consistently win rounds against his opposition even when being badly outworked and seemingly outclassed.
Having judges working the fights that don’t count jabs and body shots when factoring in their scoring gives Canelo a tremendous advantage. Essentially, the only way to beat Canelo by a decision is to get in the trenches with him and beat him at his own game by slugging.
That’s not easy to do unless you have a steel chin and formidable punching power. The only guy this writer sees at 168 with the power and chin to get the better of Canelo in a war is David Benavidez, but he hasn’t shown any interest in fighting him.
Canelo didn’t bother going after the WBC 168-lb title until AFTER Benavidez lost the belt when he came in overweight for a title defense in 2020. The Mexican star Canelo isn’t foolish.
He knows Benavidez would be a real problem for him and would likely beat him. Hence, Canelo has chosen to go in the path of least resistance by fighting Saunders, Rocky Fielding, Callum Smith, and now Plant.
Canelo isn’t invincible
“He’s [Canelo] a good fighter, but he can be beaten. We’ve already seen that. Floyd [Mayweather] made him look like he’d never boxed before, but that’s Floyd Mayweather. I’m not comparing Caleb to Floyd Mayweather.
“What I’m saying is, I’ve seen Canelo’s fights, and I’ve seen him lose rounds against Billy Joe Saunders, I’ve seen him lose rounds against [Sergey] Kovalev, just to name those two. So why can it make me think that Caleb can’t win rounds?
“I didn’t say he was going to stop the guy [Canelo], but who knows what happens in boxing? This guy isn’t invincible. He’s a fighter, and he’s a very good fighter, but do I think Caleb Plant is going to beat him? Yes, he’s going to beat him,” Ellerbe said.
Floyd Mayweatrher Jr. took Canelo to school in 2013, taking away his ability to counterpunch and demobilize his offense almost entirely.
When Canelo did have some brief success in the championship rounds, Mayweather shut him down by getting on his bike and using movement to stymie his comeback.
You can bet that Caleb Plant and his training team have watched Canelo’s fight with Mayweather no less than 100 times and have taken detailed notes to use for their game plan on Saturday night.
What’s surprising is Canelo’s opposition since the Mayweather and Erislandy Lara fights weren’t smart or disciplined enough to follow Floyd’s blueprint on beating the Mexican star.
We saw Gennady Golovkin use Mayweather’s blueprint with great success in his first fight with Canelo in 2017, but sadly, the judges scored it a 12 round draw.
But in the rematch, Golovkin failed to back up and box Canelo when he came forward the way he had against Mayweather. If Golovkin had continued to follow Mayweather’s blueprint in the rematch, he would have gotten the better of him and possibly been given the decision.
I think Golovkin still deserved at least a draw out of that fight because Canelo gassed out terribly in the second half of the battle and appeared to lose five out of the last six rounds. I gave Golovkin one of the first six rounds, so he should have gotten a draw out of the fight.
Ellerbe confident Plant wins
“You cannot do that because guys rise to the occasion,” said Ellerbe when told that boxing fans are basing Plant’s chances of beating Canelo based on his past opposition or lack thereof. “If you’re given the opportunity, guys rise to the occasion.
“When they’re fighting the best guys out there, they’re coming, and I’m confident that Caleb Plant, this is the fight of his life, and he’s going to rise to the occasion. It’s a tremendous fight, and I’m really looking forward to that one myself,” said Ellerbe in picking Plant to beat Canelo.
Ellerbe is correct about his comment on Canelo losing rounds to his various opposition because we’ve all seen that happen in the past.
Many boxing fans don’t remember seeing Canelo getting outboxed because he’s been handpicking his opposition in the last year in choosing to go after the 168-lb champions Billy Joe Saunders and Callum Smith.
Canelo also threw in a mandatory defense against a woefully poor Avni Yildirim, a fight that DAZN surprisingly chose to broadest on their platform.
When Canelo was still taking on tough opposition, he lost a lot of rounds against Gennadiy Golovkin, Erislandy Lara, and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Those fights showed that Canelo has problems when he fights long-armed fighters that use their jabs and don’t let him get in close to land his power shots or counter punch.
