Canelo vs. Floyd’s opponents since Jose Luis Castillo

I was watching Golpe a Golpe yesterday and Juan Manuel Marquez made an interesting point about Canelo Alvarez when talking about a potential fight with Afredo Angulo. He cited his desire to sign with Top Rank long ago in order to get fights with Erik Morales made but over time he realized that the only reason Top Rank signed him was in order to hold him hostage and keep him away from their top stars including Morales. Over time Marquez felt the betrayal and left Top Rank. This conversation was brought on because Oscar DeLaHoya, current GBP kingpin told reporters this past week at a Big Bear media workout for Canelo that even though Angulo is one of the top challengers for Canelo’s alphabet soup belt, that Angulo would have to wait 2 or more years in order to gain a fight with Canelo because he doesn’t have enough fans. One would take this seriously if Canelo wasn’t about to fight the superstar rapper turned boxer from tv boxing reality show fame known as Alfonso “millions and millions of fans” Gomez and prior to that the world wide renowned champ Matthew “the Hitmans brother” Hatton where he was given a free paper title. Marquez asked Angulo who joined the show via phone whether or not this bothered him. To his credit Angulo was dismissive of Canelo and his media ascribed importance and said that if the public wanted the fight bad enough that the promoters would make it. JMM knowing better posed the question again and included his own experiences with Top Rank to give Angulo a taste for things to come. Angulo again tried to play it cool but you could tell that he was annoyed by the fact that he had to fish for a fight with an unproven prospect rather than the other way around. There is plenty of absurdity to go around for sure, but for some reason all of this got me thinking about Floyd Mayweather. The reason being is because Mayweather and Canelo are very similar in the way their careers have been handled. Obviously Canelo is still young and in the infancy stages of his being babied by his matchmakers but for the sake of speculation, I thought about what would happen if Canelo fought Mayweather’s recent competition and how he would fare. Sure he’s young and inexperienced but this is what makes this exercise so interesting. I submit to you that even this version of Canelo at his current point would be able to beat anyone Mayweather has faced since Castillo. Using boxrec here are Mayweather’s opponents since Casillo (in no particular order): 1)Victoriano Sosa 2)Phillip N’dou 3)Arturo Gatti 4)Sharmba Mitchell 5)Ricky Hatton 6)Oscar De La Hoya 7)Zab Judah 8)Carlos Baldomir 9)Shane Mosley 10)Juan Manuel Marquez 11)Henry Bruseles The big names on the list are Mosley, Gatti, Oscar, Hatton and Marquez. Had Mayweather fought them in their prime this wouldn’t be an issue. But he fought Oscar as a part time fighter at 36 years old. Mosley at 38 after years of looking mediocre. Gatti while a big name was never anything special as a boxing talent. And Marquez while great is a career 126 pounder. Hatton was a very limited crude mauler who made his bones at 140 but jumped up a class for the money to fight Floyd. Mitchell was a pretty good fighter in his own right, but fought Mayweather after some tough wars with Kostya Tzyu where he was badly knocked out and suffered severe knee injuries to boot. So ask yourself, how many of these fighters at the time Floyd fought them could Canelo beat? I would argue every single one of them simply based on youth and in some cases size. JMM is obviously better than Canelo but he’s no JMW. But Canelo would be able to beat a 38 year old Mosley simply by outworking him and hurting him, he would beat Hatton because of better technique, superior size and better power, he would beat an old De La Hoya the way Manny did, he would k.o a 140 pound Gatti, and he would easily beat everyone else on that list. In fact, he already crushed Baldomir in half the time it took Mayweather to do it. This calls Mayweather’s entire career into question because if a 21 year old prospect could beat all these fighters, what does it say about the self proclaimed greatest of all time? Or perhaps Canelo is really so much better than we all know.