Timing is everything in boxing; both in terms of throwing punches in a fight and of the taking, and the making of a fight. Floyd Mayweather had to wait a number of years before he got a fight he wanted with Mexican star Canelo Alvarez, with “Money” proceeding to take the flame-haired warrior to school over the course of 12 wholly one-sided rounds in September of 2013 (forget that utterly disgraceful card handed in by one judge, who somehow, nobody on planet earth knows how, managed to score the fight a draw).
Canelo – who was just 23 years old at the time, and was sporting a 42-0-1 record against the then 44-0 Mayweather, who was aged 36 – put the schooling he was given down to his youth and lack of experience. Yet in an interesting interview with The DAZN Boxing Show, Canelo says the fight could have happened way sooner than it did, in fact some your years before.
Canelo, at the age of 18, was looking for greatness and he himself was eager to fight anyone. Sage trainer Eddy Reynoso convinced his pupil to wait some time before agreeing to face Mayweather, this to allow Canelo to gain both further experience and to earn a far bigger purse.
“They offered me the fight with Floyd when I was 18 years old,” Canelo said. “They offered me $1 million. At the time I was making $5,000. I was moving around in a truck and I had three jobs. Eddy Reynoso said, ‘In a few years, you will receive ten times that [purse].’ That’s what happened.”
It’s very possible that if Canelo had fought Mayweather at the tender age of just 18 (so some time in either 2008 or 2009), his career could have been over before it had really got going. Mayweather might well have ruined Canelo if he’d got his hands on him at such a young age. When the two did share a ring, Canelo looked at times as though he was seriously feeling sorry for himself and perhaps wanted out. Some knowledgable ringside observers felt Canelo might have wanted to pull a No Mas in the fight of almost a decade ago.
Imagine the thrashing a teenage Canelo would have got from Mayweather! And as for Floyd, he had to know at the time that the still-green Canelo was no match for him. Heck, Canelo, as good as he is (or maybe you say as great as he is), was no match for Mayweather when they did fight.
As things turned out, Canelo says he learnt a whole lot from the Mayweather defeat, and he was as we know able to come back a better fighter afterwards. But would this have been the case if Canelo had signed on for “Money” in 2008 or 2009?
