Middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez says he’s expecting a competitive fight on Saturday night between WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury in Los Angeles, California. Canelo isn’t certain which of the two big heavyweights will win, but he sees the fight as being a competitive one throughout. Canelo believes whichever of the can fight the most intelligently will win. In other words, doesn’t think Wilder is going to power through Fury like many in the boxing world are predicting.
Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) will be putting his World Boxing Council heavyweight title on the line against former IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO champion Tyson Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) at the Staples Center. The fight will be shown on Showtime PPV.
“I don’t know who will win but it will be a competitive fight,” Canelo said. “Whoever gives more in the ring will win but also whoever fights more intelligently can win. Wilder throws good, powerful shots, and Tyson boxes more, he moves more, but we will see. I feel it’s a competitive fight.”
Fury, 30, used to move a lot three years ago, but he’s not looked mobile ever since he’s come back from a three-year layoff. Fury is now more or less a stationary fighter. When he does move, he looks painfully slow, like an old car that is backfiring and not running smoothly like it once did. If Fury is going to win on Saturday, it’s not going to be due to him moving around the ring in glacially slow circles like he did against a past his best Wladimir Klitschko in 2015.
That kind of movement won’t work against Wilder, even if Fury were capable of moving like that still. It’s not going to be fast enough to keep Wilder off of him. At the most, Wilder might be 220 lbs on Saturday. He’s not a slow 250 lb heavyweight. He’s a tall guy that incredibly light for his height.
Fury has never had the mobility that Wilder possesses, and he’s not going to all of a sudden regain what little mobility that he once had after three years out of the ring and two comeback fights. We need to face the facts. Fury has lost too much weight for him to be the fighter that he once was. He’s a guy that not too long ago weighed close to 400 lbs. You have to congratulate Fury for losing so much weight, but he’ll be lucky if he’s 60% of the fighter that he was three years ago.
The thing is, even if Fury was the carbon copy of the fighter he was in 2015, he’d still likely get trounced by Wilder. The Alabama native isn’t afraid to throw punches like Wladimir was against Fury. He’s not going to be tricked by Fury’s feints, and be fearful of throwing punches. Wilder knows that Fury can’t punch, and his he’s got nothing to fear from throwing his best right hands.
“We don’t know. Both have different styles,” Canelo said in refusing to pick a winner of the Fury vs. Wilder fight. “Wilder is very tall. It will be competitive”.
It sounds like Canelo doesn’t want to commit himself to picking a winner and ending up with pie on his face. Wilder, 6’7″, is certainly tall like Canelo says, but the 6’9″ Fury is even taller. Wilder is tall enough to reach Fury’s chin. That’s the important thing that Canelo left out. Some of the shorter heavyweights that Fury has fought during his career lacked the height and reach to land head shots, and this allowed him to lean backwards against the ropes to avoid getting hit. Fury won’t be able to do that against Wilder, as he’s got the height and arm reach to reach over and poleaxe him if he chooses to use the old rope-a-dope strategy.
Canelo will be fighting next month on December 15 against WBA World super middleweight champion Rocky Fieding at Madison Square Garden in New York. Canelo wants to a win a third division world title, and he sees the 31-year-old Fielding as perfect for him to achieve that goal. It’s going to be a David vs. Goliath type of fight, considering that Canelo is only 5’8″ and he’ll be taking on the much taller 6’1″ Fielding. However, what we’ve learned from watching Canelo’s two fights against Gennay Golovkin is that the Mexican star is good at making up distance to land his power shots. If Fielding isn’t able to return fire with the same intensity, he’ll lose the fight just like Golovkin did last September.