I just saw an article quoting Hearn as saying Canelo wants Beterbiev at 175 and I thought DAMN! He's always been a guy who's chased the biggest, baddest guy in the room, regardless of money or how big a star the guy is. I noticed that about him way back when he chose to fight Lara. Lara was a tough opponent, skillful guy and the kind of guy who even if you beat him makes you look bad. No one was calling for Canelo to fight him, yet he still chose to fight him, even tho he was not a big name. Then he goes up and fights Kovalev and now Beterbiev. So with that in mind and with the fact that he's an exciting, come forward guy who gets KOs and is always in good fights, why isn't this guy more liked. With all of those elements, I would expect him to be beloved on the scale that Pacuqiao was. So why are people kinda lukewarm on him?
Maybe people feel he has skeletons in his closet? And now after he started to speak english and being disrespectful people don’t like him even more. And he ducked Golovkin in 2016.
Nope. He had used blown up welterweight moved weight classes up to fight for MW title. He also does cherry picks and is strictly hometown fighter. I hoped that at 168 lbs he will cease cherry pick and will fight vs Plant to be an undisputed. At least 2 last fights showed signs that maybe he will not cherry pick anyomore. Shenganians, clauses, short camps for opponents, special caneloweight catchweight, WW blown up for MW title fight. Jumping up/ down in weight classes and cherry picker with clauses, nice natural beef meat.
I used to like him and still enjoy watching him fight as I like his mix of aggression but also defensive skills. I also like the fact he did seem want the big names and big fights, such as going for Mayweather a fight many didn't think he was ready for. But I gradually turned off of him. From the catch weights to the GGG situation where he called him out then vacates his WBC belt, he slowly started become less daring and more risk adverse, maybe that was due to losing the Mayweather fight. But then he failed the doping test and what made it worse was all he got was a slap on the wrist for it and the WBC made a statement which basically absolved him of any wrong doing before any investigation, which only added to the idea that he was a protected cash cow, one rule for him, another rule for others. How he handled that whole situation was a PR nightmare, even if you think he didn't cheat, which is possible, but how he handled it and the statements he made around that time just turned me from then being apathetic about him to rooting against him. He still impresses me with his skills, he's developed into the fighter I thought he would become and he does seem to again be chasing the toughest opponents, but I'm not sure he'll be able to redeem himself in my eyes.
He don't deserve to have a draw and a win over Golovkin and he acts like he is the victim when he gets caught cheating, and his fans make it worse by backing this behavior and pretending he's in the right.
I don’t get the hate either. my guess from what I’ve read here. is that he is a: 1.Drug cheat 2.Has paid off judges 3. Is an A-$ide Diva 4.he avoids certain fighters Now I am not a fan of the accusations above. (although 1&2 do have some credence - He popped dirty for clebuteral / the CJ Ross scorecard vs Money May) 3 & 4 can be said about every fighter when they are at the Top. however nobody can name a fighter who is fighting more champions while staying as busy fighting 3-4 times per year.
The better question is: why is he liked? Blatant drug cheat, weight jumping cherrypicker (36yo GGG, 36 yo Mayweather cherrypick gone wrong and now he's busting at the seems to get to 37yo Beterbiev) , stacks the cards massively in his favour (people say this "A side tactics" which is a cover for being not confident in beating opponents on a roughly fair playing field), rehydration clauses, weight bully at 154, buys judges, fixes fights (Canelo Kovalev is one of the most blatant fixed fight I've ever seen. "Fixed fight" is not the sort of thing that comes to mind when I watch boxing. The Smith fight was also suspicious), covered up killing a sparring partner. It's hilarious how stupid Canelo fans are. The naivety is off the charts. They'll fall for anything. If Canelos team told them the Earth was flat they'd believe it
