No Easy Way Out: The Hopeless Predicament Of Saúl-Has Canelo Won His Last Big Match?

Canelo Alvarez is in one hell of a hopeless predicament, and there's a very good possibility from here on out, without the help from corrupt judging, he may have an incredibly hard time legitimately winning a big match for the foreseeable future. I've thought about it for a little while, and to me Canelo's future prospects look very, very bleak, his reign as the new Golden Boy and the next big box office draw in a post Mayweather/Pacquiao era may soon be coming to an abrupt end. You may ask... "But Canelo has one of the best resumes in the sport, how is this possible?" Well let me see if I can flesh it out a little bit for you.

Building The Illusion
I'll start with, I'm a fan of Canelo Alvarez, have been for awhile, but I'm going to be as real as I can be. The majority of his big wins have largely be a case of smoke and mirrors, a carefully orchestrated illusion to build him into the next big thing, the matinee idol, and most importantly a huge money maker for Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions, he has a unique look and he's clearly skilled enough to help make this illusion go down a little smoother for less knowledgeable fans. Up until recently he's been a natural 154lb Junior Middleweight, he has been for years, he hasn't had a match at Welterweight since 2010, but instead of facing actual Junior Middleweights he's been dragging up Welterweights and in a few cases Light Welterweights to face him, because the Junior Middleweight division lacks prominent and most importantly marketable names. So his rise starts out like many other rising stars, he's fed a steady diet of way past it fighters or semi well known gatekeepers like Cintron, N'Dou, Baldomir, Rhodes, Gomez and Hatton, all having multiple losses on their records and not being of any real threat to him, and most of them also being blown up natural Welterweights. He did what he was supposed to do, look good beating a former contender who he had a weight and size advantage over into a pulp. Then his first big match came along, it was against Mosley, who had a very chummy relationship with Oscar, Canelo looked okay but not great beating down poor old natural Welterweight Sugar Shane, most telling in that match was that he couldn't genuinely hurt him and keep him from trying to win, unlike Pacquiao and Mayweather who both basically shut him down offensively, but not Canelo, Shane was still giving it his all in the championship rounds, not effected in the least by Canelo's supposed power.

Then one of the most egregious examples of matchmaking I've seen in a while, he fought natural Light Welterweight Josesito Lopez, who had been brought in to fight against Victor Ortiz as a replacement for Andre Berto after he failed a drug test, Ortiz was to be Canelo's next opponent, but Josesito broke his jaw and upset the apple cart. But Oscar had IMO a far better opponent lined up in Paul The Punisher Williams, tragically Paul ended up breaking his back in a motorcycle accident and in an act of desperation Josesito Lopez was brought in as the sacrificial victim for Saul in his big Showtime debut, and to no one's shock he was completely obliterated by Canelo in 5 rounds, who was once again preying on this time a much smaller fighter.

Now the time had finally come to man up and get in the ring with a natural Junior Middleweight, to pick on someone his own size in Austin Trout, and what happened? Canelo looked completely average, he had a lot of difficulty dealing with Trout's southpaw stance, his size, his reach, his movement, and without the knockdown the match rightfully should have been a draw, maybe even with it, since Trout actually ended up winning the round he was knocked down in. That was all Floyd needed to see to let him know that Canelo was easy pickings, and Oscar and Canelo naively believing they had a chance, made the match as quickly as possible and as expected the young inexperienced Alvarez was first drained and then taken to school by the master. Trout's semi exposure of him was expanded upon and perfected by Floyd, who gave one of his more masterful recent performances.

The match with Angulo was seen as a risk by some, but the reality was Oscar and Canelo knew the gulf in skills were too wide and Angulo was struggling to make weight even against Lara. So Canelo didn't even try to make weight, he paid Angulo some cash to make it all okay, and presto he had a zombie with his feet stuck in quicksand before him to use as target practice. He was so drained according to Virgil Hunter they had to catch Angulo because he almost fell face first into the bathtub, Angulo could have been badly hurt, but thankfully for Perro... Canelo doesn't hit very hard so he could soak up hundreds of head shots flush without going down. If he can't drag them up, then drain them down. Angulo automatically moved up to Middleweight for his next fight and looked absolutely horrid against De La Rosa, so adding to how drained he was, he may have been shot to hell from his wars with Lara and Kirkland to boot.

His match against Erislandy Lara later that year only served to showcase how little Canelo had progressed as a fighter, he still showed zero ability to cut off the ring and defense was still leaky as hell, no head movement whatsoever. He basically ran around the ring in a circle chasing Lara getting nailed in the face with Lara's thoroughly predictable straight left counter, thankfully for Canelo... Lara is somewhat of a featherfist, so he could take the shots without fear of grave repercussions. But if that were a counter puncher with some pop, Canelo could have been knocked out cold. Also I might add Canelo never came close to hurting Lara, so much for his vaunted power, Angulo dropped Lara twice and hard.

Then came one of the biggest pieces of pugilistic propaganda I've seen in qute some time, his match against James Kirkland. Kirkland is as chinny as Amir Khan, maybe more so, he was KO'd by Ishida in 1, and yes that was a legitimate KO, he was hurt. The he was dropped hard by Angulo and Conyers in the first round of his fights with them, and stunned by Tapia several times. So Oscar knew against a skilled counter puncher like Canelo that Kirkland would suffer the same fate as he almost did against Angulo, only Canelo would have the wherewithal to not go all out and gassed himself trying for the KO, it would come in due time, just stand back and wait for the opportunity to present itself, over and over again. And of course the boxing public especially the casuals took the bait hook, line, and sinker, and now thought Canelo was a monstrous KO artist. Well played Oscar it worked like a charm.

That KO artist illusion was again shattered a few months later in his match against Miguel Cotto, who'd been stopped by Pacquiao, Margarito and rocked by Judah, Torres, Corley, Mosley, Mayweather and even Clottey. But where oh where did Canelo's KO power go to all of a sudden, it was nowhere to be found. Once again the illusion had been broken, so quickly they lined up poor old Amir Khan the glassiest chinned fighter in the sport, who also happens to be a Welterweight who'd just moved up from Light Welterweight, that'll get people back on board, after they get a load of this KO they'll forget all about the so so showing against Cotto. It worked out almost perfectly for them... other than Khan boxing his ears off for the first 4 rounds, showcasing his obvious limitations with movers, and fighters with superior speed, lucky for him Khan gassed because he was fatter than usual, and in the 6th he hit Khan with almost the exact same shot that Chris Algieri was able to land and rock Khan to his core with in the first round of their match.

 

Shattering The Illusion
Do you notice a pattern here, Canelo is awesome when he's facing smaller fighters with no chin that he drags up in weight, come forward fighters with no chin, and old shot to hell fighters whose glory days have long since gone. But wait... there's another pattern, when he faces actual REAL Junior Middleweights who are the same size or bigger, with a few skills, he struggles mightily to win the match, in fact he usually looks very average, almost inept, and kind of needs assistance from the judges.


There is where the problem for Canelo lies, Oscar and Canelo both know this full well. He looks like hell against slick fighters who are the same size as him, which presents a real problem for him at JMW, its a division populated with guys like Julian Williams, Demetrius Andrade, Michel Soro and the Charlo Brothers, all of whom stand a very good chance at beating him, in fact I'd say all of them can, maybe even by KO, they're all just as skilled and heavier handed than Trout and Lara, and definitely Khan who managed to rock him so hard his nieces were crying. So without the constant help of favorable scoring I think Canelo has a hard time winning against many of them. They are basically the definition of high risk, low reward, here's the reality the fact is none of those guys are particularly marketable, they lack name recognition and their in ring style is boring, they wouldn't sell one PPV, it doesn't make good economic sense to still even be hanging around this division. Which is a good thing since he can't make weight there anymore, he's clearly a full fledged Middleweight at this point.

But of course he can always stick to his tried and true formula of dragging up BIG NAME fighters from WW and savagely beating them down to make himself look like a beast. But here's the catch, Manny and Floyd are retired, and no one gives a damn about anybody else, there are no BIG NAMES left. No one wants to see a Canelo Vs. Brook, Spence, Garcia, Porter, Thurman PPV, none of them are big enough names. What weight will he drag the up to? 156, 157, 158 all in a shallow attempt to avoid an official move up the scales. And who's to say any of them will agree to it anyway, most of them don't want to give him a highlight reel KO at their expense, since they'd be losing their 0's in the process.


The Reality
So why doesn't he want to bite the bullet and go ahead and move up to 160? It's pretty simple, he and Oscar know all of what I've written is true, and they won't have any of the advantages they've had to date, the size, the youth, the weight, they'll have to play on an even playing field. Yet the few times he played on the field in the past he ended up looking very mediocre. So a move up to Middleweight will not only potentially expose him even further, it could end up destroying him as a fighter all together. I have a hard time seeing him comprehensively beating most fighters at Middleweight, they are just too big, hit too hard, and many of them are just as skilled as the fighters he's faced in the past, and just like his shots had no effect on Cotto or Angulo, they will have almost zero effect on guys that big.



Oscar knows this full well after all he moved up to Middleweight and lost his debut to light hitting Sturm 7-5, but lucky for him the judges conveniently scored it 7-5x3 in his favor, what a shock. Then he got even gutsier, and what did that get him? He got KTFO with a body shot by The Executioner Bernard Hopkins, and it was at a catchweight, that's what. So Oscar and Bernard know full well the probable fate that awaits Canelo with a move up north and they definitely aren't in any hurry for their cash cow to be brutally KO'd and his run on top as a P4P player come to an abrupt end. Fine maybe his career can recover after the KO everyone expects to happen against GGG. But will it recover after losing every other high profile match that follows?



Because that is a very real possibility. I have an incredibly hard time seeing a short 5'7 to 5'8 fighter, with a short reach, and minimal punching power having a hell of a lot of success against guys who are on average taller than Lara, and hit way harder than Kirkland and Angulo, and in many cases have the skills to back that power up and to adequately use their height and reach to their advantage. Who can he realistically beat? Jacobs, Saunders, Lemieux, Lee, Korobov, Derevyanchenko, Khytrov, Eubank Jr., Stevens, N'Dam, Quillin even Quigley? I highly doubt it.

So as you can plainly see Canelo is backed into a corner, he truly has No Easy Way Out.

He's run out of big name Welterweights to feast upon, barring tired ass rematches no one wants to see.

He can't make Junior Middleweight comfortably anymore, and since he couldn't convincingly beat Trout and Lara, he would struggle badly against many of the lesser known names. No money to be made there anyway.

And last but not least if he moves to Middleweight, what are his chances there? In all probability he gets massacred by most of them.

So there you have it.....Canelo is screwed no matter what he does, we may have just seen Canelo win for the very last time in a high profile match. Because I have a really hard time seeing him be successful in either of the last two scenarios, and he's basically depleted the first. Sadly his probable loss to GGG notwithstanding Canelo's time on top may be quickly drawing to an end. Sorry to be the bearer of that bad news.

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