By Sean Jones: IBF/WBC light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev is too powerful for Canelo Alvarez right now, which is why the Mexican star has chosen to go the weaker route against WBA champion Dmitry Bivol to try and become the undisputed champ at 175.
It’s obvious what Canelo and his trainer/manager Eddy Reynoso are looking to age Beterbiev (17-0, 17 KOs) as much as possible before they finally face him in 2024 or, if needed, 2025.
Canelo & Reynoso will wait as long as humanely possible before they finally face Beterbiev because they fight him now; they have no chance of winning.
Beterbiev all wrong for Canelo
The powerful two-time Russian Olympian Beterbiev’s game is all wrong for Canelo, and it always has.
If you were to create a fighter by hand designed to destroy Canelo, you would come up with Beterbiev. Simply put, Beterbiev is BAD news for Canelo, and the Mexican star knows that, which is why he’s avoiding him like the plague.
Beterbiev just turned 37 on January 21st, and if Canelo fights him right now, it would be reckless on his part because he can’t beat the Russian.
Why Artur Beterbiev beats Canelo
- Body punching
- Inside game
- Nonstop punching
- Not allowing rest breaks to recover
The inside game of short power punches that Beterbiev throws would ruin Canelo within four rounds, and there wouldn’t be a thing his trainer Reynoso could do about it.
Canelo wouldn’t be able to keep Beterbiev off of him, and he would blast him out with short punches thrown with destructive power.
The superior inside game of Beterbiev is just one reason he’d massacre Canelo.
The nonstop punching and the withering body shots that Beterbiev throws would be the coup de grace in him destroying Canelo and leaving him in a pile of broken flesh on the canvas on the night.
Too much firepower
“Yeah, why not? Maybe,” said Canelo to ESNEWS when asked if he’d like to fight Beterbiev at 175.
“Canelo, but he’s going to get hit with something that he’s never been hit before [by Artur Beterbiev],” Chris Mannix to DAZN when asked who the best fighter is in the world.
“Most of the time,” said Mannix, that skills matter more than size.
“The one thing that I haven’t seen anyone do against Beterbiev is attack the body,” said AK. “Those kinds of guys, that’s how you slow them down. Nobody can throw a left hook like Canelo Alvarez to the body.
“Granted, he’s going to be under a lot of fire in order to land that shot, but those are the kind of shots that are going to slow Beterbiev down from being a savage.
“We’re not saying it’s going to be easy. Obviously, it’s going to be a dangerous fight. This guy [Beterbiev] is a savage. A puncher is going to keep moving forward, but skills pay the bills in this sport, and Canelo has the skills to beat him,” said AK.
It looks like we got some naive commentators on DAZN who don’t know how talented Beterbiev is, but oh well. If Canelo gets around to fighting Beterbiev in 2023, he’s going to get blasted out for sure, and believe me; it won’t be pretty.
Sean Jones is just wondering whether Canelo’s trainer, eagle-eyed Reynoso, will throw the towel in to save him when the one-sided beating Beterbiev is inflicting on him becomes too much.
What we’d hate to see is Reynoso leave Canelo out there to soak up punishment as we saw in the Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez vs. Julio Cesar Martinez fight last weekend.
The Reynoso-trained Rey Martinez took a terrible beating from Chocolatito. It was evident that the fight needed to be stopped by the 10th round because the former 4-division world champion Roman was pounding the living daylights out of the novice-like Julio.
If Canelo takes the same type of beating from Beterbiev that Rey Martinez absorbed from Chocolatito, will Reynoso do the right thing and throw in the white towel of surrender?
Canelo won’t keep Artur off
“Gennadiy Golovkin, do you think he doesn’t hit harder than Beterbiev? Maybe he punches just as hard,” said Barak. “I know Abel Sanchez says that when he used to train ‘The Krusher’ [Sergey Kovalev], knocking everybody out, that Gennadiy Golovkin hits harder than Golovkin.
“So, maybe GGG punches just as hard as Beterbiev, and you seen that Canelo doesn’t get hurt by GGG’s punches,” said Barak in failing to remember the second Canelo-Golovkin fight when GGG staggered Canelo in the later rounds.
“My opinion just to answer Barak’s comment. I think Beterbiev hits harder than Golovkin and Kovalev,” said Sergio Mora. “There’s something about his power, how heavy his hands are. It’s that crushing power that’s scary. He can hit you anywhere.”
There’s no chance Canelo will be able to keep Beterbiev off of him for any of the rounds of the fight because he’s going to force the Mexican star to exhaust his poor cardio.
Saul’s poor cardio = his #1 flaw
Sean Jones sees Canelo as having the cardio of a 40-year-old two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker. I mean, Canelo’s cardio is just terrible, and, surprisingly, none of the fighters that he’s fought has had the sense to take advantage of that.
It’s painfully apparent how to beat a fighter like Canelo. All you need to do is force him to fight every single second of every round by throwing nonstop punches and forcing him to expend energy.
When that happens, the upper body movement Canelo uses disappears along with his punching power and his form.
Beterbiev is incredibly smart, and he’s obviously spotted Canelo’s poor stamina and already knows how to beat him like a drum.
Of course, Beterbiev would push a fast pace on Canelo even if he didn’t know that this was his weakness. That’s how Beterbeiv fights.
There’s nothing Canelo can do to avoid being worn out and stopped by Beterbiev. Hence, he’s using the only strategy he had to try and defeat Beterbiev by waiting him out until old age kicks in, hoping that by the time he faces him in 2023 or more likely 2024, he’ll have aged enough to where he can beat him.
