Crawford Needs KO to Beat Canelo: Sanchez

Trainer Abel Sanchez says Terence Crawford must knock out Canelo Alvarez to win. He doesn’t see it happening because Canelo’s punch resistance will be too good. Sanchez notes that Canelo (62-2-2, 39 KOs) has fought bigger guys with power and dominated them.

Crawford is coming into this fight with no experience at super middleweight, which he could have done something about. Terence’s fans say he chose not to move up to 168 because he wanted to focus on bulking up.

Physicality Concerns

“I think he’s a great fighter, but Bob Foster was also. He’s moving up against a guy that has never been hurt other than a fluke punch by Jose Cotto,” said trainer Abel Sanchez to K.O. Artist Sports, talking about Terence Crawford being too small and weak to move up two divisions to defeat Canelo Alvarez at super middleweight.

Foster is a former light heavyweight champion who moved up to heavyweight in the early 1970s, and was knocked out by Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. He just wasn’t big or strong enough to make the weight jump successfully. Sanchez sees Crawford in the same boat. He’s not going to be big enough to deal with Canelo’s size and strength.

“He’s moved up and fought some of best punchers in bigger divisions and controlled them. So, it’s a tough task for Terence. He’s going to have to stop. It’s a 12-round fight. He [Crawford] can’t be on his bike the whole night,” said Abel. “If he wants to win a fight and he wants to be considered like he tried, he’s going to have to stop.”

What Sanchez fails to mention is that Crawford will have to really dominate to win a decision, because he’s going to be getting hit hard by Canelo. The judges will score it for Canelo, even if he’s outlanded by Crawford’s weaker shots. They’ll focus on which of the two is landing the harder, cleaner shots, and that’s going to be Canelo. For Crawford to win, he’s going to have to stay in the pocket and out-punch Canelo.

Abel’s Canelo Theory

“I think it’s a blueprint for every Canelo fight since the Bivol fight. After four, five, six rounds, it’s a sparring match. He’s taking it easy on guys. He doesn’t want to knock some of them out. He beats on some, he doesn’t beat on others. But he’s controlled every fight after the Bivol fight. It’s been a sparring match after the sixth round,” said Abel.

It looked more like Canelo got tired after the first four or five rounds in his last three fights, and not a situation where he was “sparring.” In his fight against William Scull, he got hit with some speedy counter shots by the Cuban and seemed to decide that he didn’t want to take chances. Canelo also looked tired and not able of fighting at a faster pace needed to knock him out.