By Norm Frauenheim –
LAS VEGAS – It’s a fight at the crossroads.
Canelo’s crossroads.
Where it’ll take him is just about anybody’s guess. There’s right. There’s left. And there’s nowhere, or at least no more. Canelo Alvarez has answered 63 opening bells over the last 18 years.
The 64th is significant, but not for the way it’ll sound. Canelo has been answering opening bells the way the rest of the world answers its morning alarm. They’ve been his lifestyle, his 9-to-5 routine. It’s hard to imagine what he’d do – who he’d be – without one.
But Jermell Charlo is there, promising to end the only thing Canelo has ever known Saturday night in a Showtime pay-per-view bout at T-Mobile Arena. Charlo looms as an unlikely threat to undo that Canelo identity.
Canelo, perhaps, will prove just how unlikely. All the documented data suggests that’s what will happen.
Charlo, an undisputed champion at junior-middleweight, is jumping up two weight classes in a bid to upset Canelo, undisputed at super-middle.
Charlo has been idle for more than a year. Above all, he’s never been subjected to the pressures that accompany the kind of stage occupied by Canelo for so long.
“He’s gonna feel it,’’ Canelo said at a news conference Wednesday in a crowded ball room at the MGM Grand. “It’s hard to explain it, but it’s just something different. He’s not used to being in there with a fighter like me.’’
That begs a question, one that served as something of a promotional theme ever since the fight was announced in the summer months.
After all of those opening bells and subsequent punishment, just who is Canelo? The same fighter he believes himself to be? Still the aggressive finisher who stopped a then-feared Sergey Kovalev in the 11th round in November 2019?
Or is he at the end? It’s too easy to suggest that Canelo’s career is at the precipice. Still, there are signs he’s preparing for life after he answers that last bell. He’s selling his own brand, VMC, of Tequila cocktails. In and around his hometown, Guadalajara, he has his own line of gas stations, Canelo Energy.
Energy, of course, is one of the factors in Canelo’s perceived decline. Over his last three fights, there’s just been none of it in the late rounds. By the seventh or eighth, Canelo is running on empty.
Maybe, it’s just been a question of conditioning or injuries, especially to his left hand.The hand, he said, is fine, back to what it was following surgery.
But if that energy crisis continues Saturday night, the career is problematic.
Potentially, it could put a fatigued Canelo in jeopardy against a fighter, Charlo, who is known for staging the late assault. Charlo, a lot like possible Canelo foe David Benavidez, gets on a roll over the final three to four rounds
Canelo promises he’ll have the right counter to whatever Charlo plans to deliver.
“I never overlook any fighter,’’ said Canelo, who switched up his usual routine with a training camp at altitude in the Nevada mountains near Reno. “I know what he brings and I’m ready.
“I’ve been in there with all types of fighters. He hasn’t experienced this kind of level of fight. You will see and you will learn.’’
Throughout Wednesday’s newer, there were moments when he sounded like the fighter known worldwide today as simply Canelo. He finds motivation. He uses it. He remembers Charlo for criticism of his skillset.
“He never believed in my skills.” he said. “…Now, I have the opportunity to show my skills.’’
Charlo, known for crazy trash talk earlier in his career, has said little to annoy Canelo. If anything, the Houston fighter has been cautiously complimentary. Wednesday’s news conference was notable for all the slurs that weren’t said and all the shoves that were deliver. By boxing standards, it was polite.
Only a lion might complain.
Charlo likes to think of himself in lion-like terms. They are lionized, stitched across the front of his caps and shirts.
“I’m an effing lion,’’ he roared during the news conference.
Canelo smiled.
“I don’t know what animal I need to be,’’ he said.
Probably the animal he used to be.
