‘Nothing can prepare you for the experience of fighting Canelo Alvarez’

by John Dennen

BEFORE Canelo Alvarez’ first fight with Gennady Golovkin, the Kazakh’s trainer Abel Sanchez hotly complained about how Canelo had his hands wrapped. But Rocky Fielding’s team don’t share such concerns ahead of his clash with the Mexican superstar in tonight (December 15) at Madison Square Garden.

“I know that if his handwraps were illegal the New York State Athletic Commission would ensure that it was dealt with very promptly,” Fielding’s promoter Eddie Hearn toldBoxing News.

“Someone from Rocky’s team is watching the handwrap, if something’s untoward, they’re going to complain and the commission is going to deal with it. If it’s legal the commission will pass it. That doesn’t even concern me.”

Really the concern is the scale of the task facing Rocky, how good that is Canelo Alvarezcan be.

“Nothing can prepare you,” Hearn said. “We can’t say he won’t freeze, [we can’t say] he will freeze. I don’t think he will because he hasn’t seemed nervous. He did go to Germany and win a ‘world’ title. I know it was only [in front of] 5,000 but he did go there. He has boxed in front of 10,000 in front of a sold out Echo Arena. It’s just the fighter. That’s the problem.”

“He might not be good enough. But that wouldn’t be a disgrace. What you’ve got to do is you’ve got to try and get your moments in the fight. What do you do? Do you go out there and tuck up and be patient and safe. Or do you go for it? If you tuck up and play it safe you might up getting ground down and chinned. If you go for it, you might end up getting chinned in an exchange anyway,” Hearn continued.

But he added, “If you get beat not exchanging and not trying to knock him out [it would be disappointing]. But it’s very hard because Canelo’s so good.”