Here’s a list of the points I made a mental note of:
• Canelo started-off ridiculously slow, which resulting in him needlessly sacrificing some of the early rounds on the judges’ scorecard
• Canelo seemed solely-focussed on wearing down Kovalev, regardless of how may rounds he lost
• Kovalev gave Canelo far too much respect. He was on the back foot all the time and the Krusher of old never made an appearance, which meant he rarely attempted to throw any power shots
• From round five onwards, Kovalev was overly-negative, he didn’t try to impose himself and nor did he attempt to use his physical size advantage to force Canelo to retreat
• Canelo didn’t seem to throw any jabs – he seemed overly-patient and perhaps overly-confident about forcing a late stoppage, which could’ve cost him the fight
• Kovalev wasted shots by jabbing to Canelo’s gloves rather than using angles to breach the Mexican’s guard
• Kovalev seemed fearful of trading with Canelo
• Kovalev couldn’t hurt Canelo
• Canelo almost never needed to take a backwards step
• Kovalev didn’t seem overly-upset about the defeat (perhaps lacking ambition?) and nor did he attempt to alter his game-plan when he must’ve surely known the fight was close on the scorecards
• Canelo’s low work-rate in last night’s fight is something that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency
For the record, the purpose of this thread is not to attack Canelo or Kovalev and criticise these guys on a personal level.
Instead it’s more about the difference between our expectations prior to the fight in comparison to how events actually played-out.
To a certain degree, I feel that both guys underperformed.
Thoughts?
