Bernard Hopkins: Canelo Alvarez ready to ‘make a statement’ against Liam Smith

He’s risky coming forward and equally as effective on the back foot.

Canelo and promoter Golden Boy committed plenty of public relations flubs in the whole Golovkin situation, presumably brought about by Alvarez’s burning desire to shut up the critics clashing with Golden Boy’s desire to “marinate” and keep harvesting the golden eggs from their golden goose.

“I’m 26 years old, I’ve never ducked nobody”. Canelo sees Golovkin’s knockouts coming against no one with a name. That’s what’s important to me.

“I’ve prepared for a very tough fight against a tough opponent”, said Canelo.

Though the 28-year-old Brit is unknown to American boxing fans, the bout will be telecast on HBO Pay-Per-View. His brothers are all professional boxers, all very successful, and I think he’s the best of the brothers. Canelo has arguably the best head movement out of anyone at junior middleweight. His lone career defeat came vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. Mayweather retired with a 49-0 record and among the greatest in the history of the sport.

Watch video produced by Communities Digital News of Canelo Alvarez preparing for this bout at a media workout at The House of Boxing in National City, California.

But instead he opted to face Briton Amir Khan at a catchweight 155lbs in May and although he knocked him out in the sixth, it did little for his reputation as, like Brook did last week, Khan had moved up two weight divisions to challenge. He should throw hooks and straight punches to the body and under the guard, both from the outside and the middle.

Those fighters – WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders, former middleweight champion David Lemieux, Curtis Stevens and Saturday’s Gabriel Rosado-Willie Monroe victor – are all 160-pounders. The only belt not in his possession is that of the World Boxing Organization, whose champion is Englishman Billy Joe Saunders. “And Canelo has the mind to play chess with the punchers and play checkers when he wants to”. It was a complicated two-and-a-half year stretch of diverse styles that saw him go 5-1 against battlers, brawlers, stylists, veteran warriors, and genius-level technicians. Undefeated Smith (23-0-1 13 KO’s) defends his World Title against Mexican pound-for-pound star Canelo (47-1-1 33 KO’s) this Saturday (17th) live on BoxNation. Despite owning a major belt, Smith is rated as only the No. 8 junior middleweight by The Ring.

He has won multiple world titles and beaten the likes of Miguel Cotto, James Kirkland, Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout and Shane Mosley, as well as British pair Matthew Hatton and Ryan Rhodes.

Canelo has to get past Liam Smith first (and some people do see the upset happening in Texas!) but that would be another fight to grip British boxing – it could also be Canelo’s third fight in a row against a British boxer. Smith fights for the first time in the United States. He fights like once a year and travels a lot.

“I’m not going to change some of the methods we use, the condition I get in is great and I don’t think that will ever let me down but we’ve changed a few things from sparring partners, the pad work, the technical side and obviously the offensive and defensive stuff, which we think will work against Canelo”.

From April 2013 to November 2015, starting with Trout and ending with Cotto, Alvarez waded in deeper waters than nearly anyone else in boxing’s recent history. People have been asking me for a while whether I’m nervous but I’m not, I’m not that sort of person.