Relatively close? the general consensus on scoring that fight is around the 9-3 mark. Only fan boys had Canelo winning 5 rounds. Duran of the Moore fight busts up Canelo at 154 pounds because that fight will be held in the trenches where Duran is a master at infighting. Plus Canelo is only 5'8 and has no great height and reach advantages.
Sooo, you think that Canelo fight was close? uh what convinced you? the punch stat numbers, where Bivol out punched him every round? Or maybe it was the way Bivol controlled the action?
8-4 on my card. Canelo had nothing in the gas tank in the championship rounds. Apart from giving evidence that Hearns was better at 175 than Canelo, it’s not an especially important result for this convo. But the convo isn’t even about Hearns.
I love the revisionism and recency bias. I still think Canelo does fairly well here and is competitive with all. Hagler would get beat him. Leonard has a chance at 160 but I'm not favoring him. Duran loses, too inconsistent.
Canelo probably would beat the disinterested version of Duran that fought Laing but the best version? No way.
Thanks for your take. The scorecards still read as off the charts. One round flipped to his favour and Canelo wins???? I assume he lost the 12th on all cards - so for all the drubbing he took piror to he only had to win the 12th to take the fight? I don’t know that you can analyse Canelo’s cardio for the latter rounds in isolation - he got beat up somewhat by a LH no less. Apparently, at least one judge if not all three gave Canelo the first 4 rounds! That’s not how it read or appeared on the HLs at all. As to letting his hands go, it seemed he tried - but he was getting blocked or falling short for the most part. If he seemed less prone to punch as the fight progressed, that would be normal fatigue and trying to compute a way to get through - and not least his being wary of the counters he was eating.
The judges had it 7-5. It would've been a draw if he won the 12th, not a win for him. Bivol didn't wrestle, punch harder than previous opponents (namely GGG), move excessively, or back Canelo up. Canelo looked soft and in hindsight would've done better if he came in five pounds lighter. It looked like his conditioning had a lot to do with his performance more than Bivol wearing him down. In other fights, like against Jacobs, he had a mid rounds lull before picking up a second wind. On Saturday, it was just kept sinking deeper into fatigue.
@Pugguy The judges scorecards were off to say the least, just like 118-110 in Golovkin 1, and 117-111 in the Lara fight. In my opinion at best Canelo may of shared 2 out of the first 4 rounds, and Canelo won the 9th round. Anymore rounds than that would be stretching it, and theres certainly no way Canelo won 5 rounds. Bivol had the better defence, cleaner effective punches, the better ring generalship, and almost out landed Canelo 2 to 1 overall. And the stats tell the story about the issues Canelo had penetrating Bivols defence. Which is why Canelo tried to lure Bivol into opening up, by laying on the ropes at times. 9-3 would probably be the most unbiased score you could give in my opinion.
