Canelo Alvarez Proves His Skill Matches His Hype by Blowing Away Amir Khan
Do you still doubt Canelo Alvarez?
You shouldn’t. Alvarez is an ultra-skilled, highly competitive power puncher with fast hands and just fast-enough feet to give any reasonable future opponent the fight of his life.
Yes, that includes Gennady Golovkin, though one might wonder if Alvarez should put off the fight at least one more bout so he can get comfortable at 160 pounds. Like it or not, he’s never done that before, and Golovkin is maybe the toughest night’s work in all of boxing.
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Nonetheless, the hype surrounding Alvarez is warranted. At 25 years old, he is boxing's next superstar.
Strike that. Alvarez is today's superstar.
His clinical display of efficient, strategic boxing that resulted in a sixth-round knockout of the blazingly fast Amir Khan on Saturday night in Las Vegas was everything the boxing public needed to see in order to judge whether Alvarez has the skill to match the hype.
There should be no question now.
Alvarez has been a steadily improving fighter since most of us began watching him a few years ago when he first emerged at the elite level on Showtime. Where he once was crude in his approach, the lineal middleweight champion from Guadalajara, Mexico, is now a finely polished boxing machine.
This guy can straight-up fight.
He isn’t the traditional Mexican star. Aligning more with the likes of Juan Manuel Marquez than Erik Morales or Julio Cesar Chavez, Alvarez isn’t an avalanche of aggression. He’s cerebral in his approach. He prefers to box and counterpunch rather than mindlessly maul forward like a crazed animal, and he’s outstanding at it.
But don’t mistake his educational prowess with weakness. Alvarez is as ruthless a puncher as any man in boxing. He generates a tremendous amount of torque on his punches, and he's accurate from distances and angles that most fighters aren’t.
It's true Khan was almost hopelessly mismatched in this fight. I told you that from the beginning. Despite HBO’s incessant promotion of the fight as something fans craved to see—Jim Lampley said during the pay-per-view telecast that the bout was “universally acclaimed” after it was announced—Khan pretty much lost the fight as soon as he signed his name on the contract.
But it was how Alvarez dismantled the well-prepared Khan that was so impressive.
There was a school of thought that said Alvarez would have to become the bull to Khan’s matador to win the fight. The implication, of course, was that Alvarez would need to bore forward, eat punches and gore Khan with heavy blows until he dropped him.
That happened in a way, but it was no bull that buried Khan into the canvas in Round 6 with one of the scariest knockouts ever seen. Rather, Alvarez was the intellectual of the evening. He was a professor. Whereas Khan came in with a great plan—one he implemented quite well—Alvarez came in with several plans and several counterplans as well.
He first tried to outbox Khan.
For all the hubbub about how outstanding punchers like Golovkin and Sergey Kovalev are as pure boxers, Alvarez is perhaps even better. He might not possess as much power, but Alvarez ducks and dodges shots that would probably reach the other men’s chins.
And Alvarez adapts to what is in front of him (at least since losing a 12-round decision to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013) as well as any other fighter today.
On Saturday, Alvarez quickly discovered Khan was as fast as everyone said he was and intrepidly smart in his approach to boot. Khan moved around the ring in circles and half-moons but didn’t run from contact. Rather, the Brit initiated the action through short, brilliant bursts of punches and used his longer reach to make Alvarez miss wildly early in the fight.
But Alvarez adjusted after Round 2. He shortened his punches and his stride and began cracking Khan with hard shots to the head and body. And Alvarez didn’t just land to Khan’s midsection. He hit him everywhere: Khan's arms, chest and neck will be just as sore as his chin and rib cage Sunday morning.
Canelo could have perhaps used that strategy all the way to the win, but just as water conforms to whatever container in which it resides, Alvarez had turned into something different by the time Khan caught up to speed, and it hastened the end.
Khan was slower in Rounds 5 and 6. Hard punches to every part of a human body have a way of wilting a man’s soul. Khan was still game for a fight, of course. No man enters the ring without a heaping pile of bravery. Khan went into every round to win it. He landed good punches on Alvarez right up until the end.
But he landed the fewest of those blows—at least significance-wise—during the last four minutes of the fight. Alvarez had morphed back into a boxer by then. He was now controlling the range, pace and cadence of the bout. It was high-level stuff, the kind the retired Mayweather used to ring up 49 victories and no defeats.
But unlike Mayweather, Alvarez can separate any man from his senses with a single punch. When the time was right, Canelo made his final metamorphosis. That final devastating punch? That was fire being hurled by a 155-pound dragon.
Khan, a natural welterweight, never really had a chance. Once Alvarez set him up for the fire—a terrific overhand right that will serve YouTube highlight-makers for years to come—the fight was finished.
Alvarez is a legitimate superstar. He’s one of the top draws in boxing, and he’s set himself up to be the next great fighter of the sport, too.
But he isn’t all flash. The Canelo train is not powered by hype alone. The true engine of his ascendance to the top of the sport is the impressive skill set he’s accumulated over the past decade of fighting.
Alvarez isn’t just a popular fighter who happens to be good. He’s a damn near great one who is as popular as they come.
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