By Allan Fox: Floyd Mayweather Jr. predicts Canelo Alvarez bounces back from a recent loss to get back on the winning track.
Mayweather feels the superstar Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KOs) will resume the success he had inside the ring before his devastating defeat at the hands of WBA 175-lb champion Dmitry Bivol on May 7th.
Of course, it’s easy to predict that Canelo will return to his winning ways because he’s NOT fighting Bivol in a rematch, as he’d previously said.
Yeah, Canelo can get back to his winning ways; that’s an easy one to predict because he’s not fighting Bivol again.
Instead of fighting Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs), Canelo will face 40-year-old Gennadiy Golovkin on September 17th and likely John Ryder in December.
GGG was still an excellent fighter four to five years ago when Canelo fought him twice, but age has caught up to him, and he’s looked old, tired & feeble in his last four fights.
“One thing about Canelo, he’s going to step up to the plate and do what he’s got to do,” said Mayweather to Fighthype, predicting Canelo will come back from his loss to Bivol. “He’s going to fight. I can’t knock him because he’s going down in the Hall of Fame.”
Some boxing fans would say that Canelo is returning to his cherry-picking ways by facing Golovkin now that he’s shot and then going after another easy mark in Ryder.
In other words, the same kind of match-making Mayweather did in the second half of his career when he became strategic in the type of opponents he’d face.
So instead of Mayweather fighting risky guys like Paul Williams, Kostya Tszyu, Miguel Cotto, and Antonio Margarito, we saw him padding his record against Robert ‘The Ghost’ Guerrero, Ricky Hatton, Marcos Maidana, Andre Berto, and Victor Ortiz.
You could say that Mayweather was “working smarter, not harder” by picking the easy fights while avoiding the dangerous guys that would have put his hands on him. The cherry-picking mantra.
“Canelo has been playing a lot of golf,” said promoter Oscar De La Hoya to Fight Hub TV, speculating about the reasons for Canelo’s struggles inside the ring.
“Seriously, he’s been playing a lot of golf. I used to play a lot of golf between training camps, and it takes a lot out of you,” said De La Hoya.
It’s not just golf why Canelo lost to Bivol, though. He lost because his skills were too one-dimensional to compete with a talented combination puncher like Bivol.
Canelo is just a limited counter puncher, who doesn’t throw a lot of shots, and loads up on everything he throws.
When you have a low work rate like Canelo, and your whole game is centered around loading up on 10 to 15 punches per round to impress the judges, you’re going to lose against a combination puncher with an unbreakable guard like Bivol.
