“Give us more of Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez!” we cry. There, was that enthusiastic enough? It’s part of a new scheme to explore. If we tell the networks and promoters what they want to hear as they launch new prospects, er, champions, perhaps they’ll listen to us later when we declare “enough”?
An inane suggestion! Maybe. But being optimistic about our sport right now requires a touch of buffoonery, so why not?
Mexican Saul “Cinnamon” Alvarez, better known, still, for his red hair and freckles than any punch he’s thrown, won again on Saturday in his home state of Jalisco, against an Englishman named, let’s see, um, Ryan Rhodes. Alvarez won by preordained stoppage when, about seven rounds after he’d last imperiled Rhodes, referee Hector Afu could abide no more carnage and waved the match off, giving Alvarez another knockout victory – this one coming at 0:48 of round 12.
Afterwards, Alvarez offered to fight “El Diablo” (a curious nickname for the next balding British victim he’ll be fed) if “El Diablo” is who his manager asks him to fight. HBO commentator Bob Papa listed three junior middleweights likely to bedevil Alvarez. But Papa’s suggestions won’t be taken seriously. We’ll return to that in a bit.
There’s almost a hint of the agent provocateur to HBO Sports these days. The quickest way to turn most aficionados against a young man, now, is to have HBO feature him. Perhaps, then, Ahab is at the helm, and we’re sinking all boxing to a common pool.
Thus we rolled to Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, once more, to showcase one of the few prospects Golden Boy Promotions can be said to have developed on its own. Except that it didn’t. Alvarez, though only 20 years-old and a beneficiary of counsel from the Golden Boy himself, was a 31-prizefight pro when Oscar De La Hoya’s company found him.
Enough of the negativity, alas. No more allusions to the captain of the Pequod either. It’s time to revel in what’s good about “Cinnamon” Alvarez.
He sells tickets. Hunger is the best sauce, as they say, and the Mexican populace is surely on the sauce. Prizefighting is finally back on the public airwaves, and Mexicans are drunk with expectations. A red-haired horseman from a ranch near Guadalajara is indeed a quirky choice, but, along with a child of privilege who can fight a little, it’s what’s on the menu. ¡Vámonos entonces!
Alvarez throws combinations better than many Mexican prizefighters, even great ones. He uses the left hook to set up the right cross, too, and that’s almost novel as his hair color among Mexican prizefighters. There’s an old saw that says if you can throw the third punch in a combination, you’ll land it. The trick, of course, is throwing it. Events can obstruct that third punch; your opponent can make the first or second miss, or he can counter them and make you holster the third.
To his credit, Alvarez is rarely dissuaded. He decides to go 2/3/2 at you – cross/hook/cross – and throws that third punch, the right cross, regardless of what comes. And as the saw above promises, that punch lands. Rhodes, playing the grateful visitor after the fight, attributed Alvarez’s effectiveness to Alvarez’s body punches. But it wasn’t Alvarez’s hooks to Rhodes’ body that disarmed him; it was Alvarez’s right hand.
Early in the fight, when Rhodes did a reasonable imitation of a fighter who’d done his homework, there was some switching, orthodox to southpaw, for Alvarez to contend with. Those were his most impressive moments. Alvarez picked up Rhodes’ left cross properly, slipped outside it and returned fire with a counter right cross or uppercut. The uppercut, particularly, was nifty as it was brave. Alvarez took some chances that Rhodes’ left cross was just a trap, nervously thrown as it was, and that a missed uppercut would leave Alvarez naked and freckled in the middle of Vicente Fernandez’s arena, for all his countrymen – and future opponents – to see.
With the exception of his uppercut, Alvarez throws his straight punches, jabs and crosses, much better than his crooked ones. When Alvarez throws the jab or cross, he snaps his hips correctly and stays, for the most part, on balance. His hooks, though, are wide and sloppy and, more importantly, dependent on an opponent to stabilize their thrower. A craftsman would take a hop back when Alvarez clicks into must-throw-hooks mode and catch him with counters.
A craftsman? Well, maybe for Alvarez’s 50th opponent.
Writing of which, Bob Papa created a three-man roster that included Alfredo Angulo and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. as possibilities for Alvarez’s next opponent, after Saturday’s fight. Alvarez then threatened to fight the Devil if asked to. The first name on Papa’s list, though, was more interesting: Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto.
Cotto, you’ll remember, was believed a protected prospect – slow, if heavy, of hand – until the moment he outjabbed a still-young Shane Mosley. Alvarez seems like no other superstar so much as a slower version of Cotto. Alvarez has a little of Cotto’s stalk-you-till-I-find-you approach. Cotto is faded now, and a fight with Alvarez would be an interesting spectacle indeed.
Goodness, where did that come from? There is a better chance of Alvarez dying his hair black and running for governor of Arizona than fighting Cotto next. Papa’s suggestion, still, was a worthwhile exercise.
While his partner Roy Jones spent the night reading from the HBO/GBP script – stating over and again that Alvarez has one-punch power, even while a cumulative 513 such punches failed to render Matthew Hatton or Rhodes unconscious for an instant – Papa withdrew the glove and cast it on the floor.
Whoever the next pasty Brit to get the Alvarez-victim assignment is, remember he is not Cotto or Angulo or Chavez Jr. Now give us more Cinnamon!
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry