Longtime trainer and boxing commentator Teddy Atlas spoke with Ring Magainze on his thoughts on the Canelo Alvarez vs Terence Crawford fight this fall, and why he’s seemingly leaning towards Crawford to pull out the win over the naturally bigger Canelo.
“Through the history of the sport has always been one of the greatest questions — who wins between the real good big man and the real good little man?” Atlas said. “That has been a question through the history of the sport and we’re getting another chance to answer that question.
“You can make arguments both sides. ‘Well, Canelo is too big. He’s too big and as good as Crawford is, he stepped up with Madrimov and he struggled a little bit. He won but it was more competitive than we thought.’ But we didn’t understand how good Madrimov was because we underestimated him because he only had 10 pro fights but he had 300 amateur fights. He was a good, good, solid fighter.
“We started to knock down Crawford a little bit because our expectations were so high and that’s wrong. That’s wrong, he won, he changed gears, he did what he had to do when he realized the level of this guy in front of him and he got the win.
“But, again, people are going to say ‘Canelo is too big. He had trouble with a 154 pound guy when he went up from welterweight, so now he’s going up to 168.’…[I’m] gonna make an argument through the history of the sport where little guys have been able to beat big guys, because you reverse it. You reverse who’s got the advantage and the disadvantage.
“The size, the power of Canelo, then all of the sudden you go back and you say ‘hey, wait a minute, the other guy’s faster, the other guy’s craftier, the other guy has more options.’ Maybe he’s got the advantages like the first time Pacquiao fought De La Hoya — and I know De La Hoya was having trouble with weight and all that, I get it and that’s fair.
“At the end of the day you have an argument on both sides, who really has the advantage? I want to find out…I’m one of the people that think Crawford’s very, very special. I’m not saying Canelo’s not but I think he’s special in a different way where he’s got instincts not everyone has. It’s the timing, it’s the instinctual things, the X factors…I think they’re going to show themselves, I really do.
“And I can’t wait to see a smaller guy use those intangibles, use those X factors to beat a bigger guy.”
