Canelo Alvarez keeps getting asked about how he will react to Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s trash talk. It’s a question that assumes the inevitable. Not if. But when. Funny thing is, there’s not been much of the Mayweather trash that seemed to type-cast him a couple of years ago.
The live stream of Mayweather’s media day from his Las Vegas gym Wednesday, projected a CEO-like persona. He was cool, calm and self-assured, almost eerily so, about his 152-pound fight on Sept. 14 at Las Vegas’s MGM Grand. Canelo said all of the right things Tuesday at his own media day from Big Bear, Calif. He talked as if he were reading from a tele-prompter. Nothing that Mayweather says, Canelo promised, will bother him.
Maybe not, but a Mayweather without the expected insults might be a reason for Canelo to sweat. Why? Mayweather doesn’t appear to be worried at all about the 23-year-old Mexican who is about to make his first step on to boxing’s biggest stage.
Much has been said about Mayweather’s evolution over the last couple of years, or at least since his infamous outburst at HBO’s Larry Merchant after his controversial stoppage of Victor Ortiz. He’s appears to have grown beyond the spontaneous, emotional outbursts that always seemed to there, just waiting to erupt. Maybe, his well-documented time last summer in jail is a factor. Maybe, it’s the accumulation of years and the wisdom that comes with them. Maybe, it’s because of his Showtime contract and the responsibility that comes with a potential $250 million. By way, that’s what Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid for The Washington Post a few weeks ago. That might say more about the state of the newspaper biz than it does about Mayweather. But you get the idea. Mayweather is part mogul and part boxer these days. Trash-talk is for kids. He isn’t one anymore.
Nevertheless, profane insults from Mayweather continue to identify him as much as that precise counter. Hence, Canelo gets asked that familiar question. When trash-talk was as inevitable as his next breath, Mayweather often would explode into uninterrupted streams of it when threatened. Blame it on a streak of insecurity, or a big ego, or quick temper. Whatever the diagnosis, it’s probably still there, even if tempered by maturity. Scratch it with a real threat and an outburst figures to follow. In Canelo, there is no threat, or least that’s what Mayweather’s tone and words suggest.
“Am I fighting a guy who is just a pushover?’’ Mayweather said. “I don’t think so.’’
But, he then said in a matter-of-fact tone, Canelo record – 43 fights, 42 victories and one draw – includes opponents he should have knocked out.
“I’m not talking about A or B fighters,’’ said Mayweather, who praised Canelo as a solid boxer-puncher, yet also said that he went the distance against fighters who rated a C or D on his grade scale.
Between getting a fresh shave for his bald head and bites of a chicken diner, Mayweather talked about a lot more. There were jokes, some philosophy and an opinion that Juan Manuel Marquez deserves to be Mexico’s No. 1 fighter instead of the popular Canelo. But you never heard the flurry of expletives that are symptomatic of that one word: Worried.
He’s not.
Maybe, Canelo should be.