No, Canelo Alvarez Has Not Been Overrated

By: Sean Crose

And so It begins- the season of accusations. It’s simply a part of boxing at this point, but it’s unfortunate nonetheless. Canelo Alvarez has been the toast of the sport for over a decade now. He lost convincingly to Terrence Bud Crawford this past weekend however, and therefore he will be accused by many of being a hype job. This is a man who fought Floyd Mayweather, Miguel Cotto, Gennady Golovkin, Sergey Kovalev, Dimitri Bivol, and who knows how many other notables. And yes, he lost three times. Three times out of close to 70 fights. That, friends is not the resume of a hype job. This author actually believes Canelo should have five losses on his resume instead of three- Golovkin and Lara each bested him, IMO.

Yet calling Canelo a hype job after this weekend is absolutely ridiculous. Sure, it might be clear at this point that the guy wanted no piece of David Benavidez. That’s a legitimate argument, but it doesn’t add up to the hype job accusation. Canelo can take comfort in the fact that he certainly isn’t the only fighter to be called blatantly overrated. Other great fighters have been overhyped, but to insist that someone like Canelo isn’t as good as advertised is a bit jarring. Take a look at the span of fights he had ending with his brilliant defeat of Caleb Plant several years back. That was a world-class performance streak.

Just because those days are over, just because father time has caught up with a man, doesn’t mean his ring reputation should be tamped down. It’s not only unfair to Canelo, but at this point it’s unfair to Crawford as well, who put on an absolutely genius performance last Saturday night in Las Vegas. The truth is we don’t know if Canelo could have ever beaten Crawford. Yet that doesn’t matter. There are those who feel that Ken Norton simply had Muhammad Ali’s number and it certainly looks like Gene Tunney had Jack Dempsey’s number, and there’s a good argument that Evander Holyfield had Mike Tyson’s number. That doesn’t mean that Ali, Dempsey, and Tyson were hype jobs. They were simply human and therefore fallible.

Fair criticisms could always have been made at Canelo. If he was ever the best in the game, it was only for a relatively short period of time. Still, he was the single top fighter of the Post Mayweather era, one who faced a sea of stellar opposition and far more often than not emerged victorious. A single loss to an all-time great like Crawford doesn’t change any of that.