Is Age 23 "Green" for a fighter?

Did you know that Tommy Hearns got better after his loss to Ray Leonard? The Hearns who fought Duran and Hagler would beat Leonard.

 

Condition and experience at the highest level they could compete, I would say.

As ludicrous as it might sound on the surface, a fighter with 40+ bouts to their name could still be relatively "green" when it comes to fighting at elite level... even if they've held a belt for a year or 5, if they've spent that time fighting anything but contenders, they could still be green when it comes to trying to compete with fighters that actually deserve to be in title fights.

 

You say that as if it's wrong . Using a what if scenario that couldn't be further from the truth is not an argument. A guy who only has 2 meaningful wins and then loses 10-2 against a 36 year old elite fighter is some experienced veteran now ? Look at all the guys he was fighting in title fights prior to Mosley and Trout, the only one that even resembled a world class fighter was a declining Baldomir, whose best win was Zab Judah, the guy who managed to lose to just about every single world level fighter he met in the ring, and whose best win is Cory Spinks. Who else is there ? Lopez ? Cintron ? Rhodes ? Gomez ? Cotto and Hatton's brothers ? None of those guys were world class just because they had title fights against Canelo, who as a matter of fact, hadn't taken a title from any fighter prior to Trout, all of them were vacant.

Just because he had 40 fights doesn't mean he was experienced at the elite level, he started at 15 and learned his trade against weaker opposition. It took Chavez 44 fights to fight a top 10 ranked opponent. It took Young Corbett III an odd 70 fights to fight a ranked opponent. Other fighters like Willie Pep, Henry Armstrong, Ruben Olivares, and Alexis Arguello also took a while before becoming experienced at the elite level, fighting a couple of dozen times before fighting someone worth of note.

 

Ok. Peak Hearns beats Leonard.

 

Depends

 

What is your definition of "green". Green to me is a prospect with only a handful of fights who hasn't fought any notable names nor has fought for a world title.

Canelo was certainly not "green" in any of those aspects, it's fair to say Canelo hadn't quite reached his peak yet but green ? No.

And as I've said many times before Mayweather was older, fighting above his best weightclass, and was the smaller man. So let's take that into consideration aswell.

As for Pacquiao he was barely out of his teens and had less fights than Canelo when he become a two weight world champion.

 

This has absolutely nothing to do with Canelo's age. His fanboys should get their heads of their ass and accept that their guy is not invincible. He was thoroughly outboxed and destroyed by end of career Floyd so they swept all the **** under the rug about Canelo's previous 40+ fights simply saying "he was still green back then bro". Well what about Bivol? Why wasn't he considered green despite not even having 20 pro fights at the time of smashing Canelo's head into the canvas? I've not heard a peep from the fan boys about giving Bivol the benefit of the doubt.

In fact, before the fight they said "Canelo can fight cruisers. Bivol will get KO'ed"

But then after the fight "dude, Canelo was weak because he only ate veggies. Bivol is a weight bully who shouldn't pick on smaller guys"

When Canelo goes up against Benavidez and discovers Benavidez will fight him back unlike Charlo, what will the excuses be then? Canelo got too much wear and tear?

 

Your argument makes no sense because Mayweather wasn't at his best in Canelo fight nor was he at his best weight.

Mayweather's best weight is considered to be Super Featherweight and Canelo's best weight is considered to be Super Middleweight. So logically we could never match them up at their absolute peak.

But what we do know is that Mayweather who was above his best weightclass and who was also past his prime. Still beat a good version of Canelo pretty handily without much of a struggle.

Which clearly shows Mayweather is a superior fighter to Canelo and P4P at their best is light years ahead of him.

 

Canelo had absolutely no Amateur career. He started boxing as a pro at 16 to earn experience while a lot of those guys you mentioned were Olympic gold medalists before turning pro. Shot baldomir, Mosley, Josesito Lopez, Cottons brother and controversial win vs Trout were Canelos only fight experience before Floyd.

Floyd in comparison had beaten Cotto, Guerrero and Ortiz before Alvarez then Maidana twice and the biggest win of his career in Pac after the Alvarez fight. He was lineal and unified at both 147 and 154, you claiming Floyd was old and washed is almost as egregious as calling Canelo prime and in his absolute peak.

 

To me, a prime Canelo was the one who’d just left MW to start his SMW reign.

 

You do realize the false dichotomy in your post right ? I pointed them out to make it clear that they were more experienced than Canelo was at the same age against elite fighters, so why are you mentioning versions of them prior to even fighting those aforementioned elite fighters? If you should compare any version of Canelo with them, it should be the one that got the vacant shot against Matthew Hatton, not the one that fought Mayweather. Ali had already defeated seven ranked men and was a gold medalist, by the way, prior to fighting Liston. Floyd was Boxing since he was a toddler and went to the olympics, and Benitez was a champ at the same age Canelo was struggling in Mexico. It's clear that 23 year old Canelo was not the same as those guys were at 23.

 

You should also take into account the fact that it wasn't prime Mayweather who schooled Canelo. He didn't look great against Robert Guerrero (who was former featherweight BTW and by no means a great fighter) 4 months before he beat Canelo and he struggled against very crude Maidana, who got a lifetime beating against Devon Alexander not so long before that.