By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Daniel Jacobs is sure he would’ve knocked out Canelo Alvarez if he would’ve gotten the chance to fight Alvarez next.
“I think I stop Canelo,” Jacobs said following a press conference Thursday for his October 27 fight against Sergiy Derevyanchenko. “I’ve always said that.”
Oscar De La Hoya, Alvarez’s promoter, and Eddie Hearn, Jacobs’ promoter, engaged in negotiations for an Alvarez-Jacobs bout when it appeared early in June that Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin might not come to an agreement on a financial split for their middleweight championship rematch. Jacobs wanted more money than De La Hoya had offered for facing Alvarez, but he was more than willing to replace Golovkin as Alvarez’s next opponent.
“The fight was actually in negotiations,” Jacobs said. “Obviously, I was preparing for just the idea of it once I got the phone call. It was exciting and it was something that I would’ve took on the fly. But I don’t know, they might’ve just been using me as a pawn. You know how De La Hoya could be.”
The 31-year-old Jacobs believes his size and strength would be too much for Alvarez, who withstood Golovkin’s vaunted power when they battled to a controversial 12-round draw last September 16 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
“I won’t say it’s his style,” Jacobs said of what makes him certain he would knock out Alvarez. “I would just say it’s just the size difference. It’s what I have. It’s my attributes. It’s everything that I possess. I don’t think it has anything to do with him. But he is a small, small middleweight, so I think just my boxing skills, my power and me truly visualizing it. Like I’ve always seen it in my head. I think if I was to ever step inside the ring with Canelo [I’d knock him out]. But I’ve got this guy [Derevyanchenko] in front of me, man. I can’t really think about nobody else other than this guy.”
Mexico’s Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) and Kazakhstan’s Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) reached an agreement June 13 on a 55-45 financial split for their rematch September 15 at T-Mobile Arena (HBO Pay-Per-View).
Brooklyn’s Jacobs (34-2, 29 KOs) and Ukraine’s Derevyanchenko (12-0, 10 KOs) will meet in The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York for the middleweight title the IBF stripped from Golovkin on June 6 for making his mandatory defense versus Derevyanchenko. HBO will televise the Derevyanchenko-Jacobs bout.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
