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Canelo Alvarez (54-1-2, 36 KOs) defends his super middleweight titles against Avni Yildirim (21-2, 12 KOs) on Saturday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. Canelo is coming off two fantastic performances against top fighters Sergey Kovalev and Callum Smith and is taking a bit of a breather in terms of the level of competition in former WBC challenger Yildirim.
Yildirim has spent most of his career in Germany, but is best known for his KO loss to Chris Eubank Jr in the World Boxing Super Series tournament and his technical decision loss to Anthony Dirrell in 2019. He has athleticism, but is extremely technically limited. His style is to put on his gloves, walk forward and swing hooks. This strategy is unlikely to find much success on one of the best defensive fighters in the game. Despite a huge size advantage, Callum Smith could barely put a glove on Alvarez and Yildirim is tailor-made to make the ability shine. Canelo’s defense and counter-attacker.
Canelo is particularly excellent defensively on the inside, where he combines blocks, parries and head movements extremely well. Once he has made his opponent miss, his combinations allow him to dissect an opponent’s guard and he should have no problem getting past Yildirim’s high guard. It should be a showcase for Canelo and hopefully set up bigger fights for Canelo down the line. I personally would be very interested to see him take on Caleb Plant, but Billy Joe Saunders seems to be the favorite at the moment.
The card originally had an interesting co-main event for the WBC flyweight belt between action fighter Julio Cesar Martinez and crafty veteran McWilliams Arroyo, but Martinez had to retire with a hand injury. This is the second time Martinez has to step down from this fight and the third time in the past 6 months. The plan is for the fight to only be postponed for a month or so, and hopefully Martinez can come back and resume what has been a very entertaining title race so far.
Given the circumstances, the co-main event will be a heavyweight clash between Chinese giant Zhilei Zhang (22-0, 17 KOs) and Jerry Forrest (26-4, 20 KOs) but the highlight of the undercard is the Professional debut of the Best American Amateur Boxer Keyshawn Davis. Following the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, Davis chose to forgo the Olympics where he would have been America’s top medal prospect. Davis, at just 19, defeated a Pan American bronze medalist, two world bronze medalists and a world champion en route to a silver medal at the 2019 world championships. The United States is unlikely to win a medal in the Olympics without him, but he has the potential to pursue a fantastic professional career.
Canelo vs Yildirim airs on DAZN on Saturday, February 27 at 8:00 p.m. ET / 5:00 p.m. PT
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