How Canelo moved away from traditional Mexican style ahead of Terence Crawford super-fight
Canelo Alvarez is a proud Mexican and is one of the country’s most successful fighters of all time – who returns on September 13 to take on Terence Crawford in an era-defining fight for the undisputed super middleweight titles.
Mexican fighters carry a proud tradition of being no-nonsense, all-action fighters who can go toe-to-toe with anyone that is put in front of them.
Alvarez is one of these men, but as we have seen him grow and develop in nearly 70 professional fights, he has also developed his own unique style that has seen him pull away from the traditional Mexican way of fighting.
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He learns from every opponent he faces, and it is clear to see as you track the chronology of his career that important fights like his loss to Floyd Mayweather, his war with Miguel Cotto and his fights with Gennady Golovkin have all played an important role in shaping the Canelo we see today.
So, how exactly has Canelo adapted through adversity to become an all-time great?
Defensive nuance
Canelo has always been a defensively savvy fighter, able to make his opponents miss and then make them pay. But a turning point that seemed to put Canelo on another level was when he was outclassed by a veteran Floyd Mayweather Jr across 12 rounds.
Mayweather showed Canelo a different level of defensive mastery – making micro adjustments with his head and feet to create a hair’s breadth of space to keep him close enough to counter with precision.
Canelo had previously done as many fighters do and stayed in almost constant motion to never present a static target your opponent can gamble on, but what he learned from Mayweather is that you only need to move when it’s an absolute necessity, which allows for more energy down the stretch in a fight.
Two fights that are great examples of when this defensive adaptation came to the fore are his first fight with Gennady Golovkin in 2017 and when he faced Daniel Jacobs in 2019.
Canelo was the much faster and more explosive fighter against Golovkin and used this to his advantage. He would, while exchanging in the middle of the ring, lean back after he threw his punches to narrowly avoid the counter left hooks of Golovkin. When on the back foot, he would pivot away to his left and turn his head away, making the right hands of Golovkin miss by mere millimetres, and would never move unless something was coming his way.
Against Jacobs, it was a superb example of being able to download your opponent’s patterns early in a fight and see everything coming your way.
He knew that he had to stay close to Jacobs, who had the height and reach advantage, and he did this with elegant and otherworldly movement – able to make Jacobs miss with 17 shots in a row at one point and counter with heavy jabs and hooks.
This allowed him to walk Jacobs down, even though he was throwing far fewer punches, almost the opposite of a traditional Mexican fighter who looks to pour on pressure with high volume and less head movement.
Low-volume pressure fighting
After the Jacobs fight, Canelo opted to move up to light-heavyweight, an unprecedented decision for a man who was previously considered an undersized middleweight.
Sergey Kovalev was perhaps over the hill at this point, but was still an incredibly dangerous fighter, world champion and much larger than Alvarez.
Canelo, therefore, was forced to evolve once again to allow himself to get close and land his power shots on Kovalev.
To achieve this, Canelo relied heavily on a strong high guard, absorbing most of the shots Kovalev would throw and then exploding on the counter.
His head movement was still present, but he knew it was more risky to try and evade the shots from the bigger man because if he got caught, he would be in a compromised position and would risk getting knocked out.
Canelo shocked many by walking Kovalev down and countering his jabs with left hooks and overhand rights to great effect. He knew his opportunity would come when Kovalev would run out of steam due to unloading ineffective punches onto his gloves.
This was one of the most notable changes Canelo has made in the second half of his career, using the threat of his heavy counter punches to muzzle his opponents whilst staying in range all the time rather than trying to use his head movement to get close.
Between the second Golovkin fight, where we saw Canelo utilise a high volume style as we had seen for so many years against the likes of Shane Mosley and Alfredo Angulo, he threw almost half the amount of punches but landed a higher percentage.
Trap-setting
Canelo has become a master of not waiting for opportunities but creating them for himself using intelligence and educated pressure to force opponents to leave gaps in their defence for him to capitalise on.
This is not to say that Mexican fighters do not set traps, just that Alvarez does it in a unique way that is supremely effective and with more variety.
A perfect example of this is from slightly earlier in his career against Amir Khan.
Against Khan, Canelo came up against a man with extremely fast hands and feet. He knew he needed to catch Khan flat-footed to be able to put him down.
He did this by setting up the iconic overhand right that was the 2016 knockout of the year.
Throughout the early going of the fight, Canelo would mix his lead left hooks to head and body to create uncertainty in Khan, who was very reactive to Canelo’s feints.
Alvarez then proceeded to target the body, dropping his level by bending his legs to throw a jab or backhand to the body, which an intelligent fighter like Khan would pick up on and make adjustments to on the fly.
But the Mexican knew just what Khan would do. The Brit dropped his hands from his guard and attempted to pull back or pivot away from the body shots, which were perfectly set up.
Then in the sixth round, Canelo launched his attack, dropping his level, which stalled Khan’s feet and dropped his hands, opening up the head up to attack, and Canelo obliged by detonating an overhand and flattening Khan.
This exercise in patience, knowing he was dropping some of the early rounds, is something that other, more traditional fighters would not do and would generally opt to hunt down Khan as he tried to evade them, but Canelo brought Khan to him.
