By Jim Calfa: Leaked sparring video surfaced today showing undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez hard at work training for his fight against Jermell Charlo on September 30th.
What’s clear is Canelo’s focus on using his left hook counter and trying to land it with 100% power. That suggests he hopes to score a knockout rather than win on points.
This could backfire on Canelo because Jermell will set him up for a chopping hand KO shot like he did in his fight against Erickson Lubin. Like Canelo, Lubin was one-dimensional and Jermell picked up on his habits and knocked him out in the first round in 2017.
There wasn’t enough of the leaked video to see if Canelo was getting tired and needing to reset against the ropes. Canelo’s poor stamina has worsened recently, with him gassing out between rounds three and six, and staying tired for the remainder of the fights.
It might be a mistake for Canelo to be putting so much emphasis on landing his single kill shots because he’s been doing this since 2019 in his fight against Sergey Kovalev, and it’s made his recent fights a lot hard than they should have been.
Canelo could find himself getting outboxed and outworked by Jermell, who is a combination puncher with a Dmitry Bivol style of fighting.
If Canelo is focusing on throwing a single power shot, as he’s been doing, he’s going to be in danger of losing a decision against Jermell, provided that the judges score the fight fairly.
Jermell is working on avoiding Canelo’s left hook counter, and he could be ready to neutralize this weapon. In the video, the sparring avoided Canelo’s wildly thrown left hook and nailed him with a right hand counter to the head, taking advantage of him.
It’s obvious that the sparring partner has figured out Canelo, learning his tendencies and easily getting out of the way of his left hook.
What Cnelo needs to do is go back to being a combination puncher like he once was earlier in his career before he developed his bad habit of loading up on single shots.
His jab looks impressive in today’s leaked sparring video of Canelo, which appears almost as powerful as Terence Crawford’s. It’s unusual to see Canelo working so hard on his jab.
It’s possible that Canelo was influenced by watching how Crawford could dominate and beat Errol Spence Jr. last weekend, using mainly his jab as his primary weapon.