Lineal middleweight champion of the world Saul "Canelo" Alvarez will defend the title against UK's Amir "King" Khan at the new T-Mobile Arena, in Las Vegas Nevada. The match can be seen live on HBO PPV and also available on internet PPV.
When I read the press release from Golden Boy Promotions about this fight in February, I'm shocked! I said what? The last time I checked Khan fought at welterweight against Chris Algieri almost a year ago. There were no reports whatsoever that he struggled the weight limit of 147 pounds at welterweight.
After Khan won a decision versus Algieri, he was chasing for a Floyd Mayweather Jr. bout. But Floyd has always been turning down Khan's challenge and instead fought Andre Berto in September.
Former MW champion Miguel Cotto took on Canelo in November, which Canelo won (partly controversial though) and took the lineal middleweight title. Still, no word came out about a Canelo-Khan fight.
In early 2016, Khan is gunning for a Manny Pacquiao fight. Pacquiao lost to Mayweather in May 2015 and was staged for one last fight before retiring. Pacquiao dumped Khan and instead chose a Bradley rematch. And then... boom! the news broke... Canelo vs Khan for the middleweight championship of the world!
Well, I'll make my prediction here short. We all knew that this fight of course is about speed vs power. It is clear from the beginning that Canelo has the advantage in size and power, while Khan has the advantage in speed.
Now the bottom line here is how these two men capitalize their advantage/s towards each other. A stronger and powerful Canelo is of course ineffective if he can not catch the faster, quicker Khan. So if Canelo can effectively cut the ring down and corner Khan and unleashes his power bombs... Bingo! End of the story.
But also if the quicker, faster Khan can utilize the entire ring the whole night and maintains a disciplined fight throwing fast combination, go out from harms way before Canelo retaliates then he'll win by decision.
So it's a matter of proper execution on those advantages. And the one who executes well will win.
Now, who do you think will execute well?
Now here comes the overall boxing skills and game plan. For me, both Khan and Canelo have sound boxing skills. What I think will play a major factor here is their tendencies inside the ring that will of course influence their execution.
Khan has the tendency to trade it when he's hurt. In his two knockout defeats, Khan bravely or shall I say stupidly traded with punches to Prescott and Garcia when he was hurt after a knockdown. Of course, the wisest thing to do there is to clinch as much as you can till the cobwebs are gone. I don't mind the referee deduct points as long as I can recover and fight another round than instantly KOed.
Well, I don't see Khan here not being hurt when hit cleanly by Canelo in this fight, and then he'll resort to his tendencies.
So I've got Canelo by knockout in round 8.
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