Bivol is slowing down

Do you think this Bivol would have beaten Canelo, still?

 

He’s had a few surgeries no? And at 35 with over 100 fights pro and amateur behind him i imagine his knees and back are completely stuffed.

 

Hard to say after the KD in round 1 whether being less light on his feet was part of the gameplan or not. He had no option but to change his strategy in Beterbiev 2 and be less 'pendulum' oriented, so maybe that is sticking. That said, I saw flashes of it in Rounds 11 and 12 so it's possible he was getting rounds in the bank and testing things. Bivol has always done 'just enough' to comfortably defeat his opponents so hard to know what we can really take from the Eiifert encounter

 

He needed rounds, he could knock out Effeirt whenever he wanted, but he wasn't in a hurry...

 

I noticed that there was less of a tendency to pick his feet up, but I chalk that up to him not being in gear for most of it. The first proper punch he threw lead to a knockdown, so he needed to fight sparingly to get the rounds in, and coming off surgery, rounds are required.

When he put his foot down a bit in spots, he was back to his bouncy pendulum step footwork, and he looked like vintage Bivol. I think he still has it, but perhaps I’m reading it wrong and he doesn’t have 12 rounds of it, but it’s hard to gauge where he is physically when he has a non-starter of an opponent in front of him.

 

Bag work is terrible. No power, hands down. Yet he's a world champion. Technique means ****.

 

Age slows down everything, including recovery.

 

He's not an over the hill kovalev on extra short notice. So yes, definitely

 

Judging by his Eifert fight, Bivol has slowed a bit but it is also fair to say that throughout his career Bivol just does what he needs to do to win. Eifert did not force Bivol to do anything other than stay in his standard fight mode. Bivol has more in him than what we saw but he is still a bit less than what be used to be.

 

I want to see Bivol vs Benavidez at cruiser. Benavidez going down to 175 doesn’t seem healthy.

 

Going to cruiser doesn't seem helthy for whom?

 

Sorry I meant Benavidez

 

You might be right but he certainly looked soft at cruiserweight.

 

According to compubox Eifert landed twelve punches the whole fight, which is a record for the least punches landed in a fight that went the distance.

https://beta.compuboxdata.com/round-stats/16529

Yes it was not an entertaining bout, but it is Bivol's biggest strength (and possibly his biggest weakness) that he remains steadfastly disciplined in every second of every round, and he certainly won't deviate from that for the sake of entertainment.