Roy Jones Jr vs vs Saul "Canelo" Alvarez At 168

He'd counter Barkley to death. Relative few shots isn't a problem when most of them land. And Canelo right now is a harder puncher than Toney was at 168.

 

I do not think so

 

I know you don't.

 

I reckon Barkley could put up the kind of challenge an ageing Golovkin did.

 

Of course they are different fighters. Hearn had more power, more reach, etc. too.
Completely different fighters. My point is, Barkley did well with a lot of very good fighters.
Toney and Canelo don't fight the same either, and that's the one fight where an elite fighter 'outclassed' Barkley that i can remember (a prime Toney, versus a not-so-prime Barkley, it is worth noting).

I don't even rate Barkley highly, or think he'd beat Canelo.
I just haven't seen much from Canelo to convince me he'd have a field day.
I rate Golovkin as his only real elite opponent up at 160+, and Golovkin was a couple of years past his best anyway.

Maybe Callum Smith or Billy Joe Saunders are much much better than I think, I'm just not sure.

 

I don't see why not.

 

I'd go for Jones here. Realistically Alvarez should have between 2 and 4 defeats already. He's looked fantastic in his last few fights for sure and his defensive attributes would off set Roys speed and power punching....but Roy faced excellent defensive fighters like Tony and Hopkins and won so i'd lean towards an RJJ points win. Although then again with some of the cards Canelo gets attributed who knows.

 

This^ is something along the lines of my thinking.

A year or three ago, I’d have gone with Barkley as a value-for-money bet. Even now, I think Barkley would stand a fair-to-middling chance at causing an upset, but I’d be less inclined to put money down.

As you suggest, Golovkin can be considered Canelo’s only [relatively] elite opponent at 160 and above. And, it is difficult to know where Golovkin was, at this point (2018), in relation to his prime.

Indeed, it’s not unreasonable to think Barkley, on one of his better days, could be that problematic for any one of today’s middles/super middles. In his prime he generally did present problems for good to elite fighters.

 

Hearns also had leaky defence and suspect chin. He was hurt in almost every fight he had at 160 and 168.

Canelo has a great defence and and wasn't even visibly hurt over 24 tough rounds with GGG. He's a lot more like Toney and Duran than he is Hearns. Duran didn't beat Barkley because he was better than Hearns at 160, we all know he wasn't, but because he was better suited for the task with his chin and ability to counter Barkley's hard but fairly wide punches. Canelo has those as well, without Duran's disadvantages in size and age.

I hate to throw the old but true cliche "styles makes fights" out there, but in this case it seems I have to.

 

I'm not sure why GGG is being brought up here. He was a patient stalker, putting pressure on an opponent behind an educated jab. Very good, technical fighter.
Barkley isn't similar in any respect.

I like Iran. In some ways, an overachiever. He was big, strong, rugged with reasonable fundamentals. He out muscled the much more talented Hearns, who couldn't match Barkley's strength.
He fought with a lot of rage under Eddie Mustafa Muhammad.

I think Canelo diffuses the rage and after a few interesting rounds, starts to exploit Barkley's defensive holes and picks him apart. He's vastly better at a technical level and pretty strong for his size.

 

Jones late rounds TKO

 

Jones on points.

Iran Barkley is the man. Dunno if he could beat Canelo (i worry about the body punching) or GGG (i worry about Iran's gas tank and GGG's pressure style forcing a shoot out), but he'd really try. Hell if someone really tried they could convince me he'd KO SRL at 160 on his best night. Btw some ppl think he beat Duran or it was a draw. And Al Bernstein has said that he thought the refereeing was unfair to Iran in that fight. And nobody says "that was the best Iran Barkley that turned up that night and lost to Duran." Close fight with Nunn too. More importantly his fights were exciting.

Glad to find a chance to post about Iran Barkley while perusing the 95th Canelo thread today.

 

GGG wasn't brought up as a style match; rather as a suggested benchmark for Canelo's best win. This has come off the back of Canelo's 160+ competition being brought into question; specifically, the 'level' of his last 6 opponents (post-GGG2).

I should point out (confess?) that it is me, who has branched off from - or, perhaps extended the point about Golovkin being Canelo's best win by proposing that Barkley would have been a significant challenge for a 2018 version of Golovkin.

The initial point, however (as I see it, at least), was that Barkley would probably beat the 6 most recent Canelo opponents and could potentially, in turn, pose more of a threat to Canelo than they had. It's not an unreasonable position since, as has been pointed out, Barkley's best wins at 160+ compare favorably with Canelo's. One could also argue that, despite variable performances, Barkley featured in higher quality contests at 160 and above than has Canelo, thus far.

Typically, the extent of that speculative threat depends on what one extrapolates from Canelo's middleweight, super middleweight and light heavyweight performances. With that in mind, I think it would be fair to say that not everyone is ready, just yet, to jump on the Canelo bandwagon and seriously consider him a likeness to/on a par style-wise with James Toney and Roberto Duran, for example, which has been alluded to - not by yourself, but elsewhere in this thread.

 

No problem bud. Your position isn't unreasonable at all.

 

Canelo's hard accurate counter punching and superb defense matches up really really well here. Iran's a decent fighter but the whole styles thing doesn't do much for him here, at all.