UFC superstar Jorge Masvidal is confident that he can crumble four-weight world champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.
Earlier this month, 35-year-old Masvidal (professional MMA record 35-13) beat Nate Diaz in the main event of a UFC pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
On that same night, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Canelo knocked out Sergey Kovalev in the eleventh round to capture the WBO light heavyweight title.
After securing his big win, Masvidal called out Canelo to a cross-sport boxing match.
Back in 2017, Floyd Mayweather came out of retirement to score a tenth round stoppage over UFC superstar Conor McGregor. It was a major event that generated over 4 million pay-per-view purchases.
Masidaval, despite the boxing experience heavily in Canelo's favor, feels strongly that he's capable of pulling off a major upset.
“I consider myself 10 times the athlete [Canelo] is just because of MMA in general,” Masvidal told the Dan Le Batard Show on ESPN. “All the strength, speed and power you have to generate – to throw one kick is like throwing 10 right hands.
“The energy it takes to wrestle and pick somebody up in the air ... boxing’s just your weight, nobody cares. If I could shift those energy blocks and bring them down to boxing where I'm throwing 80 or 90 punches a round, I feel I could hurt this dude.
“I definitely agree that if [Alvarez] was to go to MMA, it wouldn’t be a challenge because I’ve thrown 10,000 left high-kicks in a month and he’s never done one. It’s kind of the same thing to boxing, where if I’ve thrown a million jabs, then he’s thrown 10 million because that’s all his focus.
“That being said, there’s still an element that I could put his ass to sleep ... maybe I don’t hit harder, but I’m definitely bigger. I could definitely make a statement and even it out for MMA, my sport. There [are] still things in boxing that are a part of boxing. I just feel I could beat him up in some areas. Does he have a better jab and left hook than me? Yeah, of course. But there’s still elements where I could make it awkward for him, just like Conor did to Mayweather. Those are the mountains I like to scale. If I'm going into boxing, I want the best guy they got.”