Shakur Stevenson says he’s known that Terence Crawford would beat Canelo Alvarez ever since watching the Mexican star struggle against the southpaw John Ryder in 2023. Stevenson concluded after watching that fight that Canelo (63-2-2, 39 KOs) has problems against southpaw fighters.
Canelo’s Southpaw Weakness Exposed
Crawford is a switch-hitter, but he’s a true southpaw, and he’ll likely stay in that stance during his title challenge of undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo on September 13th in their battle on Netflix at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Crawford, 37, isn’t going to confuse Alvarez if he chooses to fight out of the orthodox stance. It’s questionable whether Bud will have much of an advantage if he stays lefty the entire fight. He’ll still be over-matched in terms of power and lack experience at 168. That was his decision not to move up to super middleweight to take a tune-up fight before facing Canelo.
“I knew that in that weight class, Crawford is the greatest. I feel that with Canelo’s style and the style of boxing that he has, I thought that Crawford was the only guy that could beat Canelo,” said Shakur Stevenson to Ring Magazine’s channel, discussing why he’d predicted long ago that his good friend, Terence Crawford, has the style to defeat Canelo Alvarez.
Shakur’s “greatness’ remark was about when Bud was still fighting at 147. However, he looked anything but great in his debut at 154 last year against Israil Madrimov. That fight showed that Crawford has reached his peak and would likely drown if matched against the bigger punchers in the weight class.
Canelo’s Ryder Flaw
Turki Alalshikh assisted Crawford by providing him with the Canelo fight. Without that, his situation would have been bad because there were a lot of tough fights in the 154-lb division that he potentially would have lost if not for Turki throwing him a lifeline.
“Bud being a southpaw makes it a little harder for Canelo. I think Canelo has some kind of trouble with southpaws when I watched him fight John Ryder. He wasn’t that good. It’s just that Canelo was fighting against a southpaw, and it made it a little bit harder,” said Shakur.