The fight between Floyd Mayweather and Saul "Canelo" Alvarez has gained a lot of hype over the past few weeks, but Alvarez is being too overhyped heading into Saturday night.
To be fair, every fight is overhyped to a degree. That's how boxing makes money. No one would pay to watch a fight if it was marketed as a bout that wouldn't be that close.
Yes, we see this all of the time, but in Canelo's case, it feels that the hype is a bit too much for a fighter whom we haven't ever seen on this big of a stage.
This doesn't mean that Canelo is a bad fighter. He's not. In his 43 career fights, he has never lost, going 42-0-1. Of those 42 wins, 30 have come by way of knockout.
At the same time, you have to look at the fighters that he has fought. He defeated an aging Shane Mosley back in 2012 and gave Austin Trout his first career loss, but he has few major wins outside of those two. He also has no fights against elite fighters, so this will be his first truly big test against Mayweather.
If we break down the two fighters' most recent fights, we can see some things that don't exactly go in Canelo's favor.
In Canelo's last fight against Trout, he landed just 29 percent of his punches, according to CompuBox. He clearly focused on power punches, landing 43 percent of them, but he landed just 14 percent of his jabs. In fact, he failed to land a single jab in the seventh or 10th rounds. With how quick "Money" is, Canelo will need to find ways to land more than just 29 percent of his shots.
For Mayweather, his numbers looked better against an arguably better fighter. Robert Guerrero held his own for the majority of the fight against Mayweather, but he was unable to keep up with him by the end.
According to CompuBox, Mayweather landed 41 percent of his total punches along with 60 percent of his power punches. He did especially well in the eighth and ninth rounds, landing over 70 percent of his power shots.
It is also true that many have criticized Canelo's stamina heading into this fight, and that will play a big role in the later rounds. Mayweather tends to drag fights out, and with how quick and elusive he is, this could be a big problem for Canelo.
We all know how good of a fighter Mayweather is, and Canelo is pretty good as well. But still, does anyone actually expect Alvarez to take down the best boxer in the world?
Canelo is getting too much hype, but that's the nature of the sport. He is good, but he's not good enough to defeat Mayweather.
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