Former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez wasn’t too impressed with WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr’s recent win over Marcos Maidana earlier this month on September 13th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
While some boxing fans feel that Mayweather did an excellent job of neutralizing Maidana’s power by using movement and tactical clinching to stop the Argentinian from hammering him with his big shots, Canelo felt that all Mayweather did was run and he didn’t take any risks by standing in the pocket to slug with the stronger fighter.
“He [Mayweather] just kept running the whole night,” Canelo said to esnewsreporting.com. “He didn’t want to engage and take any risks.”
You can’t really blame Mayweather for wanting to use movement against the younger and stronger Maidana. It’s not as if Mayweather had the power to stand in the pocket and slug with Maidana, because Mayweather tried that tactic last May and it didn’t work out too well.
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why we didn’t see Mayweather standing and slugging with Maidana was the fouling that Maidana did in their first fight. He was constantly hitting Mayweather with punches to the back of the head in addition to kneeing him and hitting him low. You can’t really fault Mayweather for not wanting to stand in front of a fouling machine like Maidana due to the inherent danger involved.
Canelo almost sounds bitter towards Mayweather after losing to him last year in September in their mega-clash. Canelo said after the fight that Mayweather had run from him, which obviously wasn’t true because Mayweather stood in front of Canelo for the first 9 rounds and was clowning him.
It would be interesting to see Canelo agree to fight WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and stand in the pocket with him for 12 rounds like he wanted Mayweather to do against Maidana. It would be nice if Canelo would simply agree to fight Golovkin, period. Canelo isn’t showing much with his rumored next opponent 37-year-old Joshua Clottey.
That’s an awful fight and one that makes Canelo look like a cherry picker in the eyes of some boxing fans. Coming off of a controversial decision over Erislandy Lara, Canelo needs a good opponent, not a fighter from yesterday. As for Canelo-Golovkin, there’s no weight difference between the two of them despite Golovkin fighting in the middleweight division and Canelo in the 154 pound division.
Canelo chooses to fight at junior middleweight for some reason instead of moving up in weight to fight middleweights like Golovkin does. Both fighters step inside the ring at fight about 170 for their fights. Canelo has been as high as 175 for his fights at junior middleweight, and that tells you he should be fighting at middleweight rather than junior middleweight.
