Quote Originally Posted by TIC View Post
Quote Originally Posted by TitoFan View Post
Anything can be manufactured nowadays... including boxing careers.

I would imagine a naturally skeptical person such as yourself would totally understand that idea.
oh definitely, look at some of the guys in the hall of fame. canelo has beaten some good fighters & fought some of the best of his era. a fighter doesn't have to be the greatest ever to have had a very good career

I'll agree that Canelo has had a very good career. But to me, his career has been carefully constructed and carried along since the beginning. Why? Starting with his early record, another example of a "pretty boy" fighter bulging up his W-L record into the 40's with a collection of no-good, over-the-hill, undersized, local bums.

Then the obviously shady decisions by WBC-appointed judges in high profile fights. The footsies he played with Golovkin (when "Fishnets" coined the term "marinating") and the weight... saying he wasn't ready for 160 when he had already gone up to fight JCC Jr. at 170, and everybody and their brother knew Canelo walked around in the 180's. His PED use, for which he got a meaningless slap on the wrist.

His clamoring for a fight against Mayweather, who was #1 p4p at the time, supposedly because he had earned it. THEN, thankfully... Mayweather gave him a boxing lesson in one of the easiest fights he's ever had. His cherry-picking and shameful reaching for trinkets like when he went up to fight Rocky Fielding, probably the WEAKEST champion in any weight division in history... bar none. Also going up to pick off lame zebra Kovalev, who had been exposed to the body by feather-punching Andre Ward.

Through all of this... it's been his fans who have contributed to the Canelo hate that many people in boxing have. They put Canelo on a pedestal from the very start, which immediately turned a bunch of us off. Casuals seem to have forgotten the TRUE Mexican warriors of the past, like Salvador Sanchez, JCC, MAB, Eric Morales, etc.

I've even criticized the way JCC began his career... pretty much in the same fashion as Canelo... bulging his record to the 40's or 50's before ever seeing a credible opponent. But at least JCC later faced the best of his time, without thinking about diva clauses... without having judges bought in his pocket... without marinating fights. The way REAL champions do their shit.

I'm sure I've forgotten many other Canelo examples, but that's pretty much why I've always maintained that his career has been manufactured. And again... knowing how you are pretty much a "show me" kind of guy... it surprised me that you would defend someone like Canelo so much.