Canelo vs. Trout: 43,000 fans expected for April 20th clash at Alamodome

By Boxing News - 04/01/2013 - Comments

canelo 07By Allan Fox: There are three weeks to go before the April 20th fight between WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) and WBA champ Austin Trout (26-0, 14 KO’s) and already 31,500 tickets have been sold for the fight. Mike Battah of Battah Promotions is expecting 12,000 tickets to be sold by the time the fight takes place at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.

That’s well short of the 58,891 that Julio Cesar Chavez drew for his 1993 fight against a prime Pernell Whitaker, but then again Canelo is no Chavez Sr. in terms of popularity as of yet and Trout is not at the talent level or popularity of Pernell Whitaker.

Trout hasn’t fought in front of a huge crowd like the expected 43,000 fans and it’s going to be a big test for him to see if he can handle the pressure from the big Canelo-friendly crowd. You’ve got to expect that the crowd is going to energize Canelo in a huge way and get him to fight at a high level.

Will Trout be affected in this way as well or will the crowd cause him to doubt himself? Sometimes a loud crowd can motivated the visiting fighter as well as the home fighter, especially when the visiting fighter has never fought in front of a huge crowd before. It could take Trout’s game to another level and make him hard to hit by Canelo.

What Canelo has to worry about is not letting the crowd get him too excited for this fight because he can’t afford to go plodding forward leading himself wide open while looking to KO Trout with every shot. This isn’t one of Canelo’s over-matched past opponents like Josesito Lopez, Shane Mosley and Alfonso Gomez.

Trout is in his prime and he’s actual junior middleweight, and he’s not going to make it easy on Canelo if he goes in there leaving himself open. Trout isn’t someone that Canelo is going to be able to destroy by going straight at him and looking to run him down like a big tank.

If the crowd motivates Canelo too much, we could see him turn into another Delvin Rodriguez and end up getting out-boxed. Canelo has to use his head, think smart, and look to jab, and pick his spots for slugging.



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