Sergey Kovalev v Saul Canelo Alvarez 2/11/19 Sky Sports/DAZN

[Gandalf]

I know everyone hates Alvarez and that I'm the only member of the canelo fan club here :S but if I take my bias out of this I think it's a good fight, kovalev is obviously older now, he got tired and a bit lazy v black Alvarez and got ko'd for it but I think he was winning that fight until he lazed around with his hands and then he came back well and won over 12 rounds, which isn't bad for a guy who's stamina is apparently buggered. And v yardie he won that by outlasting a younger git who is quite clearly a very good athlete...

Anyway I sort of forgot what I was rambling about.... But in the end I think kovalev isn't totally finished, Cleary not at his best anymore but also clearly quite a bit bigger than saul alvarez, Which will make this closer than some fellows would have you bo-lieve.

I also suspect Alvarez managers who are far smarter than I are very confident of winning this, so if my mate saul wins I wouldn't rank it as his best win, which in my opinion is the fight v golovkin, where I had him winning by one!

Kovalev does get tired, but you are right in that he can weather storms and finish fights pretty well. Everyone looks to the second Ward fight, but I think Kovalev would have been fine had it continued and it really was a ball attack. He was on the retreat, but he has shown that it doesn't mean he is done in a fight. It is just very surprising to ever see him in that mode so it probably looks more significant than it is.

Kovalev is a big man and I am not sure Canelo is going to be able to get close enough to the body or even hit hard enough to cause damage. He tends to go 12 in all of his big fights and always loses a significant number of rounds.

If Kov gets that jab pumping and it is a power shot really, then Canelo will find it tough. It is not a Trout jab which was good, but a bang on the money nose busting jab.

[Master]

Kovalev hopes to cash in on Alvarez weight jump

Canelo Alvarez is taking a big chance in his latest fight, moving up to light heavyweight Saturday night to challenge Sergey Kovalev for a piece of the 175-pound crown.

It's dangerous territory against a dangerous puncher. But Kovalev believes he has more at stake in the crossroads bout than does his red-haired Mexican opponent.

''I should defend my title, I will defend my title,'' Kovalev said. ''If I lose, I lose more than Canelo loses. Canelo, he is trying to make his history, but I'm here. I'm in my position.''

That position would be on top of the light heavyweight division - at least according to one of the ranking organizations that stake claims to legitimacy in the convoluted world of boxing. Kovalev rebounded from two losses to Andre Ward to regain a title belt and then stopped Anthony Yarde just two months ago in his native Russia to move into position for a lucrative fight with Alvarez.

There are questions about his age (36) and the wear and tear the fights with Ward took out of him. But Kovalev can still punch and, armed with new trainer Buddy McGirt, believes he still has some good days in the ring ahead of him - beginning with his scheduled 12-round fight with Alvarez.

''This is the biggest fight of my career,'' Kovalev said. ''I've never been in this situation, where someone is coming from middleweight. I'm not going to make a prediction, but I am going to go in there and defend my title.''

For Alvarez, the fight is later in the year than his normal Mexican Independence weekend bout in September, and against an opponent who wasn't the first choice of boxing fans or his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya. They wanted him to fight a third bout against Gennadiy Golovkin but Alvarez refused, believing his business with GGG has already been settled.

Faced with having to find a name opponent to satisfy his 10-fight, $350 million deal with the streaming service DAZN, Alvarez turned to Kovalev instead.

''Obviously I wanted to fight in September but couldn't,'' Alvarez said. ''Things just happen.''

Alvarez, whose only loss was to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, is a 4-1 favorite to beat Kovalev and stake his claim to the mythical pound-for-pound title that boxing fans love to argue about. Should he win he would also add a title belt in a fourth weight class in a pro career that began as a 15-year-old in Mexico in 2005.

But Kovalev has some pedigree of his own, even if his stature was tarnished when he lost a close decision to Ward and was then stopped in their rematch. Kovalev was also stopped last year by Eleider Alvarez before beating him by decision in a rematch, and he was in trouble against Yarde before coming back to stop him.

Now he is back in the ring for a huge fight just 10 weeks after traveling to Russia to beat Yarde.



''I had a short rest since my last fight. But I think that's better,'' Kovalev said. ''My body feels really good, and I'm ready for this fight. This fight will be very interesting. It has a worldwide intrigue.''

Kovalev is confident that he will continue his improvement under McGirt, whom he turned to after his losses to resurrect his career and refine his style. McGirt said Kovalev got too comfortable while knocking almost everyone out and trying to live up to his nickname of ''Krusher.''

McGirt said his fighter is rediscovering some of the boxing skills he let lapse in previous fights.

''People underestimate his boxing IQ because he's always knocked everybody out,'' McGirt said. ''He's smarter than people give him credit for.''

Smart enough to make a multimillion-dollar payday, and possibly smart enough to win the fight. Kovalev will have the advantage of being the bigger man and being comfortable at 175 pounds, but McGirt said Alvarez has an advantage in not having to lose weight just before the fight.

''He's very dangerous now because he's younger and he's not losing the weight now, so he's not losing the energy,'' McGirt said. ''I just think that they picked the wrong veteran to mess with when they picked Sergey. They should have found somebody else.''

https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/kovalev-...9092--box.html

[Master]

There's something different about Canelo Alvarez ahead of Sergey Kovalev clash

uperficially, everything was so familiar, yet to those who know, they were actually so different. The car pulled up to the entrance of the MGM Grand and Canelo Alvarez slipped out and headed toward a ring in the hotel lobby where several hundred fans chanted his name.

A phalanx of television cameras awaited him. In a room off the lobby, a small knot of reporters waited to question him about his challenge of Sergey Kovalev for the WBO light heavyweight title on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden.

He’s made this walk, heard these roars, done these interviews for years now. It’s old hat to the 29-year-old superstar.

A win over Kovalev would give him a championship in a fourth weight class, making him one of only 20 men in boxing history to pull that off.

“It means a lot to me,” Alvarez said via interpreter Vivien Nichols. “… It’s a huge accomplishment that not a lot of people have done.”

If he wins, he’ll join three Hall of Famers — Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns and Mike McCallum — as the only one-time super welterweight champions to go on to capture a light heavyweight title.

Given that the next division up (cruiserweight) is 25 pounds north of light heavyweight, there will be no fifth championship no matter how he fares against Kovalev.

“Probably not,” he said, chuckling.

Nichols’ presence was part of what is so different about Alvarez. In the past, he’s primarily used Golden Boy matchmaker Roberto Diaz to interpret for him. Sometimes he used Golden Boy publicists Ramiro Gonzalez or Gabriel Rivas, and at other times it was handled by Golden Boy president Eric Gomez or CEO Oscar De La Hoya.

But it’s no secret within boxing circles that Alvarez and De La Hoya are at odds. De La Hoya did not show Tuesday, and it was no coincidence. The Athletic’s Mike Coppinger broke down the news in an excellent deep dive on Wednesday, but the essence of the story is that Alvarez is firmly wresting control of his career.

No one at Golden Boy speaks for him any more. No one at Golden Boy makes decisions on his behalf. Alvarez is the captain of the ship and he’ll sink or swim with his decisions. What he finally decided he won’t do is fail by doing what someone else told him to do.



Fourteen years to the day earlier, Alvarez was 15 years old and made his pro debut in Tonala, Mexico, when he stopped Abraham Gonzalez in the fourth round of a super lightweight bout for which Alvarez weighed 139 pounds.

Never did he dream that he’d be the biggest star in the sport or that he’d make generational wealth from his boxing career. His only goal that day was to somehow get the same respect that was shown toward Oscar Larios, a world champion at the time who trained in his gym.

“I saw how everyone was with him and that’s what I wanted for myself one day,” Alvarez said.

He’s now grossed over $500 million in his career and could get to the billion-dollar mark someday if he fights long enough.

He’s a winner not because he’s 52-1-2 with 35 knockouts and wins over a slew of elite opponents. He’s beaten Gennadiy Golovkin, Shane Mosley and Miguel Cotto, each of whom is likely to be elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame one day, as well as top-tier fighters like Austin Trout, Daniel Jacobs, Liam Smith, Amir Khan, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Erislandy Lara.

He’s a winner regardless of the outcome of the Kovalev fight because he’s won the game. Boxing is a like a lottery ticket for a lot of poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks who have little hope of succeeding otherwise. They can put in and put in and put in and wind up with nothing to show for it. Every now and then, though, there’s someone like Alvarez, who works the system to his advantage and cashes that winning PowerBall check.

Just earning the money in the first place is hard enough, but boxing history documents so well how difficult it is for them to keep it. Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson burned through $300 million before going bankrupt; with Evander Holyfield, it was a bit more than $200 million.

Alvarez has kept his money and has set his children’s grandchildren up for future success. That is beating the system.



Beating Kovalev is another matter. Kovalev is 36 and perceived to be on the back side of his career. Though Alvarez is smaller, he’s a huge minus-500 favorite to win at the MGM Grand Sports Book.

Kovalev, though, is on something of a career resurgence after a shocking 2018 loss to Eleider Alvarez (no relation). Kovalev blamed many of his problems as a pro on a lack of good training, and dismissed his ex-trainer, John David Jackson, as a man who did nothing for him other than hold the mitts.

Kovalev has a video on his phone of an amateur fight in which he was a stylistic boxer, and he’s attempting to go back to that to prepare for Saturday’s bout.

“If he does what I know he can do, he’s going to surprise a lot of people,” trainer Buddy McGirt said of Kovalev. “Not me. He’s not going to surprise me because I know he’s going to win the fight. But I know in my heart if he does what I know he can do and he puts it all together Saturday, which I know he will do, everybody is going to be in for a shock.”

Count on this, though: Fans may be shocked. Media may be shocked. People at Golden Boy, or within the boxing industry at large, may be shocked by what Kovalev can do.

The three people, though, who guaranteed they won’t be shocked if Kovalev looks and boxes great are Alvarez and his trainers, Eddy and Chepo Reynoso.

“The thing Canelo does is he covers all the details,” Eddy Reynoso said. “He thinks of everything and we prepare him for that. He’s never surprised.”

And so it really wasn’t much of a surprise that Alvarez showed up Tuesday without the Golden Boy brass getting into the picture frames and fawning all over him.

He long ago vowed he would be the one to make the decisions and when he felt things weren’t going the way he envisioned them, he stepped up.

Golden Boy’s existence is tied directly to Alvarez; without him, it’s largely insignificant in the wider boxing landscape.

Alvarez is a winner, but he’s one of the rare fighters who doesn’t score all of his wins inside the ropes. He’s gotten plenty of them outside, as well.

https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/the...202726669.html

[Alpha]

I have to give credit to Canelo for making this fight. Say what you want about Kovalev, but he is still one of the best at 175. If Kovalev can keep it at range, I can see him outboxing Canelo. Thing is if it goes to the cards, Kovalev runs the risk of the decision going against him.

[Fenster]

Kov needed a couple of goes to make 175. Canelo looks awesome.

[Fenster]

I have to give credit to Canelo for making this fight. Say what you want about Kovalev, but he is still one of the best at 175. If Kovalev can keep it at range, I can see him outboxing Canelo. Thing is if it goes to the cards, Kovalev runs the risk of the decision going against him.

9/1 Kovalev PTS. I too think Kovalev will outbox him, whether he makes it to the line though is another matter.

[GAME]

I have to give credit to Canelo for making this fight. Say what you want about Kovalev, but he is still one of the best at 175. If Kovalev can keep it at range, I can see him outboxing Canelo. Thing is if it goes to the cards, Kovalev runs the risk of the decision going against him.

9/1 Kovalev PTS. I too think Kovalev will outbox him, whether he makes it to the line though is another matter.

Yeah I think it will go the distance with Kovalev getting the better of it but the decision will go to Canelo

The Mexicans head movement will be key early on if he wants to of avoid the fate of Ward and Hopkins who tasted the canvas early. After that as the action settles I think Canelo may surprise a few people by looking the puncher in the fight. Kovalev will be jabbing away keeping distance but the big meaty shots will be dug in by Canelo. Even though he's the shorter man and needs to close the gap I think he will be at his most effective when counter punching.

kovalev perhaps hasn't had long enough to let his body recover from the Yarde fight and at 36 is slowing down, but rehydration clause may be the biggest factor going against him. If he is compromised entering the ring expect to see a weaker Krusher than we are use to. That said I still expect a competitive, good fight

[Master]

Bakole v Hernandez on now on the Crolla card.

Hernandez started fast in the 1st round and pushing Bakole back. Give it to the underdog.