Teddy Atlas wasn’t impressed with what he witnessed from Canelo Alvarez last Saturday night with the way he labored to a grueling, unimpressive victory over the pedestrian-looking John Ryder in their main event fight on DAZN pay-per-view at the Estadio Akron stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Atlas says Canelo (59-2-2, 39 KOs) looked like a fighter that is on the slide, and he feels that he’s “overrated” and has padded his record with a whole slew of boxers that were easy marks.
Given all the soft jobs that Canelo has fought over the years, Teddy says he can’t put him up with the Mexican greats of the past, as those fighters would have fought the best and not avoided them.
Atlas says Canelo should have rifled the slow, easy-to-hit, weak-punching Ryder (32-6, 18 KOs) with punches all night and gotten him out of there, but he didn’t. Instead, Canelo threw single punches only and was getting hit a lot by Ryder because he wasn’t using head movement, and his reaction to incoming shots wasn’t there.
The shots that Canelo had been able to avoid in the past year, he was getting hit by them last Saturday night. In Teddy’s eyes, that’s a sign that Canelo has deteriorated and is not the fighter he was several years ago.
Before the 32-year-old Canelo’s skills decline any further, Atlas would like for him to stay at 168 and defend against David Benavidez rather than see him return to thee 175-lb division to challenge WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol in a needless rematch.
The boxing public wants to see Canelo face Benavidez (27-0, 23 KOs) right now, and it’s one that he’d have a better chance of winning than facing Bivol again in an unwinnable rematch.
Next to no one is giving Canelo any chance of beating Bivol in September, and it’s foolish for the Mexican star to be going in that direction.
Bivol is in another league than Canelo in terms of technical ability, as he was taught the right way by his trainers, and he’s not someone that has gotten over because of hand speed, counter-punching and careful match-making.
“Canelo has always been overrated,” said Teddy Atlas to The Fight podcast in reacting to the Mexican superstar’s win over John Ryder last Saturday night on DAZN pay-per-view.
“He is NOT the greatest Mexican fighter of all time. He is overrated; he probably lost to [Erislandy] Lara, and he lost twice to GGG. I know it’s old news; it is old history; he lost the first two [against Gennadiy Golovkin], especially the first one, he lost to Mayweather, every round, except for with that judge who should be in jail,” said Atlas.
