Santos Saúl Álvarez Barragán vs. Caleb Hunter Plant & Elvis Rodríguez vs. Juan Pablo Romero RBR

I had it 7-3 Canelo. 6-4 is cool too but anything more than that is a "stretch".

 

First 3 for me. But they werent "definitive". I liked Calebs body of work through those rounds.

 

No i can see 8-2, i agree with you, its the other guy i dont agree with!

 

I was like wait a minute, did i not make myself clear?

Ive been seeing posters score 6 rounds for plant, and as much as i would have liked to see that, because ive been an advocate for plant over the last month saying he'll do better than anybody since GGG, theres just no way i can come to that conclussion.

 

Yeah i know..

 

Disappointed

Literally no shocks

 

I addressed this in the scorecards thread before you asked.

Rather than extending kindness to Plant, I was looking for reinforcement of my initial (live) impression of the bout, but instead concluded that my attention had wandered after Plant had looked to be unravelling in the 6th. These things happen after 04:00 in the morning when the fight is decent enough but less than a barnburner.

First, we disagree on the number of swing rounds. Looking at the bout in the cold light of day, Canelo spent a good amount of time doing not a lot, and his better punches weren't always plentiful enough to cancel out those spells where he was handing the initiative to Plant and allowing him the relative freedom to enact his gameplan. Landing the best punches in a three-minute period doesn't necessarily win you the round, you can still lose it if you're cruising through two minutes of that period and not emphatically bossing the other minute or clearly hurting the guy when you do land.

As the bout grew old, more than just being secure in his defensive skills and lacking respect for Plant's punch, Canelo had become almost blasé about walking in and allowing Plant to get off (when he wasn't exhibiting visible irritation when Plant would make him miss). That's a privileged kind of confidence which stems from a conviction that the judges will have you in a handy lead so long as you're not being emphatically beaten — believing that anything close will go his way only emboldens Canelo's existing relaxation in a fight, but that could work out to his detriment at some juncture. Reynoso knows as much and isn't as comfortable relying on A-side favor, if the talking-to he gave Canelo after one of those later rounds is anything to go by.

I'm ready to break it down more specifically, round by round (as I always am), if anybody wants to do that.

 

Respectfully you are wrong.

 

I sympathise so have mine. It’s only today that I am starting to feel myself again having not had much sleep in the last 3 days. Guess this is what a big fight and anticipation does for you. @CST80 you and I have had our moments but I think we come to this match up of Canelo vs Plant from different perspectives which should be put in context. You don’t like both Plant and Canelo and please correct me if my memory is a bit wrong on this but I think you even despise Plant more. I like both Plant and Canelo a lot. I think you expected Canelo to beat Plant and I expected Plant to beat Canelo. Now when it comes to scoring this fight I believe I scored the vast majority of the rounds to Plant impressed by his speed of hand and feet, defence in making Canelo miss a lot, very effective use of shoulder roll or philly she’ll defence etc. I scored the first 5 rounds easily for Plant. I grant the 2nd round was more debatable but I was more impressed with Plant’s work. I think you were scoring the vast majority of these rounds for Canelo and maybe you gave Plant just 1 of the first 5 rounds. I think what swayed is that though Canelo was missing a lot and troubled by Plant’s elusiveness you felt his aggression was effective. I did not feel it was in the first half of the fight was the key difference. I also believe you and others scoring these rounds for Canelo felt Plant touching Canelo was not effective because there was not much meat or power on the punches. My view from what I understand how judges are to score fights is you get points for hitting the target not the power of punches which is a relative and somewhat nebulous concept until you damage the person like the knockdown in round 11. The 2nd half of the fight was more open to interpretation and you can distribute the rounds like you feel. I gave them again mostly to Plant you to Canelo. Ultimately it’s all irrelevant because Canelo to me did what truly great fighters do when Eddy Reynoso bollocked him that he was throwing it away he got into a higher gear and took Plant out. We can keep debating it but that really is the bottom line. I cannot overstate my admiration for both protagonists. This was a big fight that delivered and the live crowd and PPV figures will reflect this. I look forward to Canelo fighting the likes of Charlo and Benaivides next year as well as others. I think seasoned Canelo watchers will observe Saturday was not his best performance but credit for that must go to Plant in my opinion because he made stylistically difficult. The criticism of Plant for me is not using more right hands down the pipe but I am maybe being overly critical. In any event what this fight tells me that the fighters with the best chance of beating Canelo have to be genuine all rounders. Being skillful and athletic alone won’t do it you will need meat on your punches to disssuade him just coming. The reason Floyd outclassed Canelo was due to his all round brilliance. Canelo like many others tried to walk through Floyd but could not.