He had Bivol backed up against the ropes covering up several times. Bivol clearly respected Canelo's power, he was in a shell with those earmuffs on for long stretches of that fight. Canelo also swole up Callum Smith's bicep another current 175-lber. Causing that kind of bicep damage is evidence of major punching power.
Biceps arent a scoring blow. Beterbiev hits arms and they immediately move that arm. Canelo cannot penetrate a 175 pounders guard. He doesnt hit hard enough. Hes too small. Period.
Canelo knocked Kovalev out cold, busted up Callum Smith's and Bivol's bicep. The guy has major power. Of course it's true that he's not able to do to 175-lbers what he can do to smaller fighters, but he clearly has power. It's important to note that Bivol and Beterbiev for that matter have really good punch resistance. So it's not so much that Canelo's power doesn't translate to 175 it's more that just those guys are very hard to hurt or stop.
As you do. You don't have to be at 175 to be hard to stop, look at GGG, he's a 160-lber and Canelo couldn't really hurt him. Some fighters just have iron chins and good punch resistance, regardless of the weight, it's more about a fighter's overall strength. Canelo could probably stop many 175-lbers, but Bivol and Beterbiev are cut from a different cloth. Joe Smith hits like a ton of bricks but he couldn't do anything to Bivol or to Beterbiev.
Bivol has a great guard and excellent feet. That being said, that was a Bivol who fought well within himself and even then he still schooled Clenelo
You call it a schooling but that was the hardest fight of Bivol's career by a mile. Canelo took him into deep waters. Bivol passed the test but not before taking some punishment dished out by the Undisputed SMW Champ. Those were 12 tough rounds for Bivol. He came out of it a better fighter with valuable experience having been in there with the P4P best. Bivol never tasted uppercuts like that before, he never seen his bicep get tore up like that before. It was a great fight and an epic battle between two of the best in the sport.
Bivol didn't even go down. Almost out cold? Nonsense. And you literally just said Joe Smith had a "LHW" frame. We saw Bivol dominate him 8 to 1 in punches thrown. We have seen him against many LHW contenders.
With the exception of Clenelo, and the weight difference between them was 3lbs or 5lbs absolute max, Bivol is pretty much always if not always the smaller man as in giving away weight. Many of these LHWs he's fought weigh a division more than him
Canelo could weigh anything but I think the days of being able to function at 175 are passed. If, after Kovalev, he had said "I'm at 175, this is Caneloweight forevermore," he might have given Bivol a harder night. In the end there is only so much elasticity in the body.
Canelo fully loaded up in his punches against Bivil and even at 168lb. He has to do that because his power has not increased from his 160lbs days even though his frame has moved up. At 160lbs he was more fluid and had more range. Now Canelo is a front foward counter puncher who loads up maximum torque on 1-2-3 punches to get the most impact out of them. It works well though because he can back you up and still counter well so the impact of those "160lb" punches in greater when you have a guy on the retreat Against someone like Beterbiev he could win most of the rounds but what happens in a clinch? Or when he gets mauled and backed up or countered by Beterbiev off the ropes or pushed back? I guarantee Canelo would never have felt power like that in his life. Joe Smith was dropped 4 times and badly hurt around 5 times and this was a guy walking into that fight at 190bs+ and significantly bigger and stronger than Canelo. Same with Gvozdyk too. Beterbiev probably wipes out Zurdo in the same way. Canelo has little to no chance.