Canelo vs Charlo: Mexican champion on downslide but has enough left to fend off challenger

Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez used to be the man in boxing. The face of the sport.

He still is when it comes to making and generating money.

But it when comes to in-ring performance, to steal a phrase from legendary American broadcaster Howard Cosell about Muhammad Ali, Canelo is not the man he used to be.

Not even close.

Even Canelo’s most ardent fans would be hard-pressed to argue that Terrence Crawford, Naoya Inoue and Oleksander Usyk have not eclipsed the Mexican superstar when it comes to the pound-for-pound rankings through their recent sensational performances.

Now, Canelo is set to take on the undisputed light middleweight champion Jermell Charlo – the younger of the identical twin boxing champions – on Sunday.

But can Canelo turn back the clock and put on a P4P performance? Will he add another scalp to his glittering career?

Let’s take a closer look:

Canelo: Still great, but slipping

Make no mistake, the 33-year-old Canelo is still a top fighter.

But Canelo, who began his career as a teenager and has racked up an impressive 66 fights including 59 wins and just two defeats, has been fighting for two decades.

Recently, boxing watchers have seen growing signs of slippage.”

Proof of Canelo’s downslide can be gleaned from the opponents he has chosen to face over the past few years – Callum Smith, Avni Yıldırım, Billy Joe Saunders, Caleb Plant, Gennady Golovkin, John Ryder, Sergey Kovalev, and Dmitry Bivol – and his performances against them.

Golovkin at 40, was well past his time when Canelo beat him in their third bout (arguably Canelo’s only clear victory against the Kazakh legend).

Kovalev, at the time he faced Canelo, was a pale shadow of the ‘Crusher’ Kovalev who stood tall against Andre Ward.

Just one name stands out after a perusal of the list of Canelo’s recent opposition – Bivol, the Russian professional who took Canelo to school in May 2022.

The rest are solid fighters but the result was never really in doubt.

In better days, Canelo would have dispatched his most recent opponent Ryder – a good British professional boxer – in the first half of the fight.

Instead, Canelo, despite knocking Ryder down and hunting for a KO all night, only managed to defeat the Brit by Unanimous Decision.

It was hardly a vintage performance in front of a baying 51,000-strong home crowd in Mexico’s Guadalajara.

Charlo: Young and hungry

Meanwhile, his opponent, Charlo is a young, hungry fighter.

Charlo, who has suffered just one defeat in his 35 bouts, is another good fighter.

But he hasn’t faced anyone even close to Canelo’s caliber.”

Worse, Charlo is jumping two whole weight divisions – from junior middleweight to super middleweight – in a sport where every pound can make the difference.

While Charlo is a skilled boxer, he has been accused of giving away far too many rounds in his fights.

He has also at times struggled to put away his opponents – hardly a murderer’s row themselves.

There are two questions that need to be answered.

The first – can Charlo hurt Canelo?

While the young champion has good power in his fists – he has knockouts in just over half of his 35 fights – he does not have the firepower to put Canelo in peril.

The Mexican champion in the past has displayed a cast-iron chin – most impressively absorbing blows from the thunderous-punching Golovkin with nary a change of expression.

The second – can Charlo win rounds against Canelo?

That’s a good question.

Or perhaps to put it another way – will judges award Charlo rounds against boxing’s golden goose?

While Bivol laid out a clear blueprint for beating Canelo – stick and move, stick and move – judges still had the fight far closer than it had any right to be at 115-113 in favour of the Russian.

Prediction

So, how does a Canelo-Charlo match play out?

It’s that old adage again – a boxer’s power is the last thing to fade.

While Canelo has seemingly made it a habit of hearing the final bell and he’s never been the fleetest of foot, he still has plenty of dynamite in his hands.

Bivol, at 175 pounds, was simply too big for Canelo to inflict any real damage – size in boxing really, really matters – and far too slick to leave himself open for Canelo to catch him with combinations.

The Mexican champion was reduced to loading up against Bivol and throwing one shot at a time in a desperate attempt to bail himself out – which only left Canelo even more gassed towards the latter half of the fight.

Besides, there’s a wild card – ring rust.”

Canelo, who fought in May, has had nine fights in the past five years.

Charlo, meanwhile, last fought in May 2022. He’s has had just five fights over the past five years.

While one could argue Charlo, who is the same age as Canelo, is the ‘fresher’ fighter, his lack of activity over the past year could come back to haunt him.

To be fair, Charlo looked exceedingly sharp in his last outing against Brian Castano – a back-and-forth bout he ended with a single, perfectly-timed kill shot in the 10^th round.

Plus, there’s Charlo jumping up weight classes – which didn’t work out too well for Cuban maestro Guillermo Rigondeaux against fellow great Vasyl Lomachenko.

Bet on the Mexican warrior to catch the American late – and put Charlo away for his first KO in a while.

Pick: Canelo by late stoppage