Spence: ‘Jacobs can beat Canelo if he boxes him’

By Dan Ambrose

Boxingnews24.com

Errol Spence Jr. says IBF middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs can win on Saturday night against WBA/WBC unified champion Saul Canelo Alvarez if he chooses to box him, and be the more active of the two fighters when they face each other on DAZN.

Canelo is the favorite to win with the odds-makers, however. They feel that the talented Golden Boy star will have too much for the 32-year-old Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs) when they fight each other at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“I want Jacobs to win. I feel if Jacobs can box him and be more active, he can win,” Spence said to Fighthype in analyzing the Canelo vs. Jacobs fight. “I rock with Danny, but Canelo is a good fighter.”

What’s going to make it hard for Jacobs to win on Saturday is his poor defense. He gets hit too much, and that’s something he cannot afford when facing Canelo. In Jacobs’ last two narrow wins over Sergiy Derevyanchenko and Maciej Sulecki, those two fighters were able to put hands on him, mark him up, and come close to winning. Jacobs beat them both by 12 round decisions, but they were close enough fights where he could have lost if those guys did just a little bit more.

If Canelo is able to land as often as Sulecki and Derevyanchenko did on Jacobs, he’ll either stop him or beat him by a decision. Canelo vs. Jacobs will be taking pace at the T-Mobile Arena, which is a venue where Canelo has done well in the past. If Canelo is able to land as often a Sulecki and Derevyanchenko did on Jacobs, then he might not need favorable scoring from the assigned judges to win the fight. He’ll knockout Jacobs.

If Jacobs fights the way he did against Gennady Golovkin and Peter Quillin, then Canelo is in BIG trouble on Saturday night, because that was a different Jacobs than what we’ve seen from him in his last two fights. Jacobs didn’t look good against Sulecki and Derevyanchenko. Whether that’s a lack of motivation or maybe the wear and tear from the GGG fight having done something to him is unclear. Jacobs hasn’t looked good since his loss to Golovkin.

“I see Canelo knocking him out. Jacobs is getting too old,” said Teofimo Lopez Sr. to Fighthype in analyzing the Canelo-Jacobs fight for next Saturday. “He showed it with GGG. GGG got to him. Canelo’s no different. All these guys got to be on the inside to hurt people. I believe Canelo is going to get on the inside, and he’s going to hurt him. You can move all you want, but if you’re going to get followed, it doesn’t matter if you move. Jacobs does get touched. He’s not just going to run for the whole fight. Sooner or later, Canelo is going to catch up to him, and hit him to the body and rip him apart,” Teofimo Sr. said

32-year-old isn’t old for a middleweight. Teofimo Lopez Sr. is seeing something that isn’t there. Jacobs isn’t old yet. He’s still fighting at a high level. His problem is he’s not fighting aggressively enough in his fights, and he’s allowing his opponents to stay in there with him long enough for them to land a lot of shots. Jacobs mostly boxed Sulecki until the 12th round before he started siting down on his shot sand was able to drop him in their fight last year in April. Against Derevyanchenko, Jacobs moved a lot, and that took away a lot of his power. Had Jacobs fought flat-footed and sat down on his punches, he might have knocked Derevyanchenko out.

“Have you seen the way Canelo looks? He looks like a freaking monster,” Teofimo Sr. said in discussing Canelo’s transformed physique. “I don’t know what Canelo is doing, but whatever he’s doing he’s doing something good. Canelo’s a good fighter, but he’s got to be on the inside to do everything he does. I don’t see a fighter in that weight class that can take his power. He doesn’t care if he gets hit. He’ll take a couple of punches, and come back and hit you with something he’s got. He has to be on the inside to do what he has to do,” Teofimo Sr. said.

Canelo changed the way his physique looks since his first fight with Golovkin in 2017. It’s nothing new that Canelo is looking cut up like a bodybuilder. He’s been sporting that look for two years now since the first fight with GGG in September 2017. It’s hard to say whether that more muscular look has led to Canelo punching with more power or not He seems to be about as powerful as he was when he as still carrying some fat on his physique in 2016. the extra muscle weight likely serves the purpose of helping Canelo take shots. He was still hurt in his second fight with GGG last September.