Unified super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez says his underdog challenger Edgar Berlanga will need a great camp to have a chance against him on September 14th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
A Massive Step Up for Berlanga
Berlanga (22-0, 17 KOs) is taking a massive step up in class, facing the superstar Canelo (61-2-2, 39 KOs), and hasn’t had the type of preliminary fights that would prepare him for this level of fighter. What Berlanga has going for him is size, youth, and power. Assuming he puts all those things together, he’s got a chance.
Berlanga will need to walk through a lot of heat shots to have a chance of winning. We’ve seen young, ambitious fighters do that in the past when facing greats, but it’s questionable whether Berlanga has the chin to take the kind of shots that Canelo will be nailing him with in their headliner live on DAZN PPV.
Canelo, 34, has reason to be confident. He’s coming into the fight after an impressive performance against Jaime Munguia last May. Munguia is arguably a better fighter than Berlanga, but not quite as big or as powerful.
Canelo’s Prediction: Pain and a Knockout
“I don’t know how quick, but I’m going to do my job, and I’m going to try to let him to feel so much pain and then knock him out. I don’t know what round,” said Canelo Alvarez to TMZSports about his fight against Edgar Berbanga on September 14th.
“He already knows, and he’s going to need a really good camp, so I hope he prepares himself really well because he’s going to need it.”
Canelo will need to fight hard for three minutes of every round to keep from giving Berlanga a chance of winning. Against Munguia, Canelo fought in spurts, getting hit with big shots and giving rounds away needlessly.
If Canelo had a better engine, that fight would have been over by the sixth round because he had Munguia down in the forty and ready to be knocked out. Berlanga has too much power for Canelo to allow him to stay in the fight.
