Hamzah Sheeraz is picking Canelo Alvarez to defeat Terence Crawford tonight at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. The unbeaten, highly ranked super middleweight contender Sheeraz believes Canelo (63-2-2, 39 KOs) has the natural size advantage, and has faced better opposition throughout his career.
“You’re fighting someone that’s naturally a welterweight that’s coming up to 168,” said Hamzah Sheeraz to BoxNation, talking about Terence Crawford moving up essentially three divisions from 147 to 168 to challenge Canelo Alvarez tonight for his four titles.
Crawford is essentially a welterweight who has put on a lot of weight through bulking up. He’d had a lot of time to gain weight through weight training and eating.
“I just feel that Canelo is too strong, too shrewd, and too smart for him. I wouldn’t say declined. He knows he’s going in there and will win regardless. So, he doesn’t need to push that extra gear where he did before,” said Hamzah when asked if he thinks Canelo has declined.
It’s going to upset a lot of people if Canelo defeats Crawford, as many fans predict he will defeat the Mexican star. Some of them are so convinced that they can’t see a possibility of Alvarez winning this fight.
We’ll see tonight if the weight that Crawford has packed on translates to an increase of punching power to where he was a year ago when he fought Israil Madrimov in August 2024. He didn’t look powerful in that fight.
If he doesn’t have enough pop on his punches to hold Canelo off, he’s going to need to use movement if he doesn’t want to be made a big example of what happens when fighters move up three weight classes to challenge for world titles.
“[Tonight] we’ll see the old Canelo again because it’s been a while since he’d had a big dustup in Vegas,” said Sheeraz.
It’s been seven years since Canelo was involved in a huge fight that created interest worldwide in his rematch with Gennadiy Golovkin in 2018. Dmitry Bivol wasn’t a big name when Canelo fought him and lost in May 2022.
