The One is fast approaching. After endless ballyhoo, including more press conferences and articles than even a mathematician could count, the long awaited showdown between Floyd ?Money? Mayweather and Saul ?Canelo? Alvarez is almost here.
The bout between Floyd and Canelo feels like most anticipated fight in years, which is a good thing. Boxing needs all the attention it can get. But there is good attention as well as bad, and bad attention, some of which has plagued Money May in the past, is the last thing boxing needs in the present.
With all eyes focused on Saturday?s night, I spoke with ESPN?s Teddy Atlas. Always accessible, always engaging, and never less than controversial, I asked what he thought about Mayweather vs. Canelo, and what we might expect when the opening bell rings.
?I hope for the sake of boxing it?s a good fight and a competitive fight,? said Atlas, ?because when you charge this kind of money you have this kind of expectation and fever for it and it?s a boon to the industry, it can be a boon to the business for future fights if it lives up to expectations. As long as it?s not like the boy who cried wolf, when there was no wolf, then pay-per-view fights won?t be damaged. If people believe it will be good, they?ll come around and pay attention the next time you do a big fight. So it?s important the fighters carry that on their shoulders to a certain extent, but they don?t think about those things in those kinds of ways.
?But it?s true. It does influence the sport when you have a big fight like this, and the participants influence how other pay-per-view fights can do. So it?s important in that way. And there?s always an updraft. It?s sort of like a car race, where you?ve got the car in front of you and it pulls the car behind you. It?s sort of that way with a big fight. If it?s a good fight there?s interest for awhile, buzz for awhile, before and after the fight. That?s good for the business overall, to bring attention to it. Because this is the only sport that?s not looked out for in concentrated ways like the other sports are. The other sports have constructed commissions and agencies, so to speak, whether it?s the NBA, baseball/MLB, and of course the NFL, that market the sport, that look out for the sport all year long, and there?s no such mechanism that does that for our sport of boxing. So these big fights do that to a certain extent. They yell from the rooftops and mountains, ?Hey, this sport is still healthy. This sport is still vibrant. This sport is still important.? So it is important that it doesn?t flop.?
Does boxing still matter? I say yes, but of course I?m preaching to the choir.
?Mayweather does great pay-per-view numbers because he?s undefeated and because there?s a mystique to him. There?s a draw because of his attitude, his personality, some of the arrogance, the confidence, the mischief, the problems, the family dealings?but that doesn?t mean that his fights are always great. If you look at it honestly, his fights can?t always be great, because one of the reasons he?s undefeated at this point in his career is that he doesn?t always make great fights. He makes the kind of fights that he needs to make, a winning fight, a winning scenario for himself but not for the other guy, fights where he bogs guys down in a defensive mire, into a slower paced fight where they?re a little hesitant about going full throttle. They make people a little more tentative at times, a little more thoughtful, and if you?re not landing something, it can?t be a good fight. That?s pretty simple. You don?t need Teddy Atlas to tell you that.
?Mayweather?s a guy who?s a bit of a ghost in the ring, like a jack-in-the-box that?s going up and down, moving his head and you can?t catch him. And guess what? Usually that?s not the most scintillating thing to watch. But they still watch. That?s what matters, because at this point it?s to see if this is the day Mayweather gets his, if Mayweather finally loses. It?s all part of the Floyd Mayweather package and what he brings to the table. That?s one of the reasons why this fight is so anticipated. And of course he?s got a guy in front of him who has a great Latino base, which is tremendous. I?m very happy about that because it?s good for boxing. The Latino fans have always been fans of boxing. They?re passionate, and they?re knowledgeable, and they usually are demanding. It?s good to have fans that are demanding. If they?re knowledgeable they will be demanding, because they know what to demand. The promoters are happy. Now you just have to find out if fans are going to be happy.?
If the promoters are happy, I suppose I should be happy as well. After all, a teaspoon of happiness is worth more than a barrel of sorrow. But someone has to win this fight. Unless it?s a draw, shudder the thought, there are going to be unhappy Mexicans or unhappy Americans, and a lot of them. Teddy, however, doesn?t agree.
?I think they will,? he continued. ?The naysayers on either side or the critics are asking whether or not Alvarez has enough experience, that that?s the downside for him. I think they?re wrong, because when you turn pro at 15 and now you?re 23, guess what? You?ve got a lot of experience. When you turn pro at 15, you?re fighting men, you?re experienced enough. So I think that?s going to be fine for him. The hand speed is one of the things you have to look at. Mayweather usually always has the edge. But Alvarez has underestimated hand speed. He is a bigger, younger guy. That?s another thing that goes into his column. If he can use those things and fight with a vibrancy as a young guy with confidence and strength and size, then it means something. If he can?t then it doesn?t mean anything. I think the fight plan has to be not like the laymen think, that he just has to go in there and be bigger and stronger. If he does that, I would guess that he?s going to lose the fight. There?s more to it when you?re fighting a fighter at the level that Mayweather?s at. If it was just being bigger and stronger, he would have lost a long time ago. For me, I would say if Alvarez goes in there with the understanding and intent to win the outside or at least stabilize the outside, control the outside the best that he can with his jab, even lower the sites on it to the chest, not to the head, which is a better target when you have a guy moving, to maintain a semblance?maybe more than a semblance?of control there and not give it up to Mayweather to have free reign, if he can do that, with the intent to do other things, he can control the exterior and eventually own the interior, where he can use his strength.?
Atlas is a hundred times more analytical than I am, and I?m pretty analytical myself. But when it comes to boxing, I defer to my betters, and there?s no one better than Teddy.
?I think there?s misnomers about Alvarez. The people that think they?re going to see and seek-and-destroy mentality and all-out blitz coming at you?Alvarez ain?t that guy. Alvarez is very thoughtful. He?s a guy who likes to have a little space. He puts his punches together pretty well. I might also give a check to combination punching for Alvarez. Floyd doesn?t really put punches together. If you watch Floyd, especially the last couple years, where he only fights a couple times a year, if that, he?s not a huge combination puncher. Alvarez has a developed mind to go to the body. He does it pretty regularly. He?ll throw a couple to the head bang bang. He?ll throw a couple bang bang to the body, mostly with the left hook, and that will be useful to him and important in this fight. Even though most people think being and seek-and-destroy kind of guy is what it?s going to take to vanquish Mr. Mayweather, I?m not so sure. It might serve him not to fall into that trap of getting too close where he doesn?t find anything with Floyd; he finds a void, an abyss, a darkness where punches just go into this hole. But if he keeps a little space, he might just see what?s available. Floyd will make his head movement to the right 99.9 percent of the time. You can count on it, and when you can count on it you can make plans. And when you can make plans you can win, if you can execute those plans.
?I like Floyd. But he?s fortunate he wasn?t around during the time of Sugar Ray Robinson because Robinson had this punch, he had this right hand, it was like a corkscrew right hand that he would throw to the body, almost to the kidney. Man, that was a scary punch, it was a debilitating punch, God it was a damaging punch, and Floyd gives you that side of his when he moves his head to the right. Sugar Ray Robinson would have taken that, really taken that, and I don?t see fighters doing that too often nowadays. I don?t see fighters doing it at all anymore, to be honest with you.?
The Robinson vs. Mayweather debate shows no sign of cooling down. It represents old versus new school, black and white versus color, the past versus the present. It?s a good thing we have YouTube to add to the mix.
?Somebody said to me, ?If someone?s going to get knocked out it would be Floyd.? Actually, I don?t believe that. If someone got knocked out it would be Alvarez. That?s the one thing I see that?s a possible fatal flaw. A chink in the armor of Alvarez is that he?ll stand up straight in front of you, sometimes back up a little, and he?ll try to pick everything off. You can?t pick everything off. When you make a guy miss, he has to be thoughtful about how many he?s going to throw at you, because he didn?t hit you and he might expose himself, or he has exposed himself in some way. So by making a guy miss, you automatically make a guy less of an offensive fighter. You?re making him less prone to be offensive minded. Floyd?s mentality is to throw less because he may expose himself. And when you?ve got a guy throwing less, well, your chances become better, your defense becomes better, your chances overall become better, because if the guy?s throwing less at you, he has less chance of hitting you, there?s less danger. But when you?re blocking you might be handcuffing yourself. And when you?re blocking, your eyes might be good, your reflexes might be pretty good, but this guy?s keeping you busy. And sooner or later, if he?s keeping you busy, he?s in charge and he?s prone to throw more, and some will get through. And I see that with Alvarez. He stands up and tries to pick sometimes, in spots?and it?s very dangerous.
?If I had a fighter and looked at that on videotape with the fighter I?d say, ?Look, we?ve got to make a run. When you get him in this position, and you can get him in this position, make a run, just make a real run, and put your punches together because you really have nothing coming back at you.? The only thing is, Floyd has everything to do that, all the physical tools, all the equipment to do it except for one thing: the mentality. Floyd?s really not an aggressive guy that really puts the pedal to the metal when it comes to offense. He doesn?t. We perceive sometimes that he does, because he?s quick and he?s good, he?s slick, so we perceive the rest of it to go with that. But it?s a misperception if you really look at it. Floyd?s mentality is to make you miss, win the fight, and get out of Dodge. He does it in a very good way, a very successful way, a very calculating, controlled way, and in a very careful way. Floyd?s greatest strength is his defense. But I also think it?s his greatest weakness, because he goes defensive too often. He goes defensive when he doesn?t need to. It?s part of his genius that he?s able to do something all the time to a certain extent pretty much the same way and still do it, still succeed at it. You gotta give him credit for that. But you also have to peek at the guys who are fighting him and say, ?Where are their trainers? Where is their preparation? Where is their awareness? Where are their heads???
Those are questions that need to be asked. But the answer, at least in part, brings us back to Mayweather. His skills are off the chart. He is not however a perfect fighter.
?There are times when he anticipates something coming, he?s making a defensive move already, and what it does is it gives you a chance to get punches off, to volley punches at him. And most of the time you don?t land, but again he?s inviting punches that in those spots, if he had thrown punches at you when he had a chance when you?re coming in, and just threw, just fired at you, you never would have thrown those punches at him. You would have been in a defensive mode. And you might have got hit. Who knows where the fight might have gone? But you wouldn?t have been throwing. You wouldn?t have been on the attack. He gives you a chance to go on the offense sometimes, when he doesn?t have to. He sometimes puts himself in the line of fire that he doesn?t have to put himself in. If he had thrown those punches, the other guy?s punches wouldn?t have been coming at him. Because Alvarez keeps a little space and because he has good hand speed and because he puts punches together, I think in those spots when Floyd goes defensive, there?s going to be a chance for Alvarez to get something.
?I think it?s going to be an interesting fight, because of all those things I just said on both sides. Any time you have an argument, and we just made a good argument for both sides, that usually equates to being a good fight, or if nothing else an interesting fight, a fight with some intrigue. At the end of the day, I think it?s going to be a close fight. I think it?s going to have ebbs and flows. I think Alvarez is going to have a chance to not only be in the fight, but to be ahead in the fight, or get ahead in the fight because of those lapses, those moments when Floyd goes so defensive you can outwork him. It doesn?t mean you can outland him. That depends on where you?re throwing the punches, obviously. It?s up to where your choices are of where those punches need to be and the accuracy with them. But it does mean that he?s going to give you a chance to outwork, outhustle him, and I think it?s going to be a close fight and it?s going to come into the hands of the judges. I think most of the viewers out there, the people who have heard me, know I have no confidence in the judges in the country, or anywhere in this sport of boxing. I really don?t. And you know what? You can say what you want about me, but I think that their record has proven, has shown why I think this way. Over the years, consistently, constantly, in these kinds of fights it usually just goes to the guy who?s controlled by the promoter. You don?t have to be Sherlock Holmes. Just look at it. It?s right there. So, at the end of the night, maybe you get a controversial decision. But I?m going to say Alvarez is going to win the fight. I think there will be plenty of opportunities for Floyd to be the better guy, as I?ve described, but in the end, being young, being strong, being a guy who turned pro at 15, he?s going to be ready to take advantage of the opportunities to outwork Floyd when others guys haven?t. They?ve smothered themselves. Guerrero smothered himself. He ran in and he found nothing. I?m going to say Alvarez is going to be a little better and he?s going to find something and win a close decision.?
