By Dan Ambrose: Oleksandr Usyk says he’ll come down to cruiserweight to entertain a fight with Canelo Alvarez on the condition that he can hold onto his IBF, WBA & WBO heavyweight titles.
The former undisputed cruiserweight champion Usyk (19-0, 13 KOs) was asked this week if he’d be open to fighting the legacy-focused Canelo in his old weight class, and he said he’d do it.
Usyk has heard about the $10 million+ purse that IBF super middleweight champion Caleb Plant got for his fight with Canelo last November 6th, and he wants to get in on the action.
The 2012 Olympic gold medalist Usyk is waiting to find out when his rematch with Anthony Joshua will occur. That fight isn’t until March or April of next year.
Oleksandr, 6’3″, has excellent boxing and technical skills and a great chin. So the way Canelo has been able to score knockouts recently despite having a VERY low punch output won’t likely work against Usyk.
Unless Canelo can throw more shots and fight harder than he’s been, Usyk would embarrass him and likely score a stoppage.
Usyk would have no problems fighting Canelo
Getting down to cruiserweight for some light work against the smallish 5’8″ Canelo (57-1-2, 39 KOs) would be easy work for Usyk, as he weighed at 221 lbs for his last fight at heavyweight against Joshua (24–2, 22 KOs) on September 25th.
Cruiserweights tend to make weight at 200 lbs and then rehydrate to around 215 lbs. For Usyk to go from 221 lbs to 200 lbs would be easy because he would only need to lose five pounds of muscle and then dehydrate the remaining 15 to 16 lbs of water weight to gt to the 200 lb limit to face Canelo.
Usyk is open to a Cruiserweight fight against @Canelo under one condition 👀 pic.twitter.com/8S6EwiEQSf
— ESPN Ringside (@ESPNRingside) December 14, 2021
Canelo wants to go up to cruiserweight to take on WBC champion Ilunga Makabu for his next to become a five-division world champion.
Fans would be much more impressed with Canelo if he were to fight Usyk at cruiserweight than the flawed paper champion Makabu. Yeah, Usyk doesn’t have a title for the belt-hungry Canelo to win, but let’s not kid ourselves.
Canelo is obsessed with winning titles
The ONLY way Canelo beats Usyk is if he gets similar judging as we saw in his two fights with Gennadiy Golovkin, Erislandy Lara, Miguel Cotto, and Austin Trout. With that kind of judging, Usyk wouldn’t stand a chance against Canelo unless he knocked him out, which is possible.
Alvarez has gotten into a weird cycle where he’s focused on winning world titles against paper champions instead of the talented ones, and it’s got many boxing fans turned off to his calculated opportunist approach to winning belts.
The fans would celebrate Canelo winning world titles if he were fighting the good champions, but he’s not doing that.
Maybe Gennadiy Golovkin knocked something out of Canelo, causing him to stop taking risks and focusing on nothing but sure-thing wins against paper champions like those he won at 168 to become the undisputed champion.