Canelo Alvarez vs Dmitry Bivol predictions
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Saul Alvarez steps back into the ring this weekend, against light-heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol. Will the Russian be Canelo’s toughest test since Golovkin, or will he be just another step on the road? Lukasz and Mateusz take a look
Lukasz Fenrych: Don’t get me wrong, Bivol is a world class fighter. He’s got very good movement, a very good jab, and sharp accurate punching when he ups the tempo.
I suspect you can see where this is going.
Bivol is world class, but Canelo is elite, right at the top of the p4p heap, and for a fighter of Bivol’s level to give a guy like that trouble… well, it needs to be a more awkward stylistic matchup than I see this being. Yes, it’s still true that if you have to pick a weakest point of Canelo’s game it’s that his movement is not rapid in the way an Usyk, Lomachenko, Inoue type fighter might be - but you have to do more with it, be more unpredictable and more varied than Bivol is, to take advantage of that. Bivol moves laterally, but he isn’t constantly spinning his opponents or taking them off balance or anything - he keeps his opponents from settling by moving around while jabbing at range, but when he actually moves in and out for an exchange, it’s usually down the center line, and when he does take an angle to disengage, it’s often after taking one step straight back before getting off that line. Any single snapshot of what he’s doing looks nice, technically solid, and pretty safe, but over the course of a fight and multiple fights there’s little variation to the the looks he’s giving. Given that Canelo has become expert at disguising his movement, keeping close even if he doesn’t seem to be moving fast, and making the final move on varied beats to break his opponent’s timing, it’s not not an ideal thing to bring to the table.
The same goes for his offence. As mentioned, his jab taken on its own is excellent… but far too often, ‘taken on its own’ is all you get, and you certainly can’t beat Canelo fighting with just a jab, seeing as the Mexican is probably the best fighter currently around at using the timing of his opponent’s lead hand for his own work. When Bivol does do more, it’s almost always a short left-right-left combo, while standing still, before a disengage or clinching up- which again comes with the problem of being repetitive against one of the best pattern-readers in the sport but comes with the double problem that when he does decide to shorten it up - or, very occasionally, extend- and finish the combination with a right, he often doesn’t disengage at all, and just stands there. So look out for Canelo to throw often behind Bivol’s right hand, because he’ll be fairly confident that the Russian won’t move till he’s thrown the left.
That sounds like I’m down on the idea of this fight as a contest and…well, as an actual chance of Canelo losing, I’m not seeing it. But with fighters as good as this there is a joy to be found in how they approach each challenge, and Bivol is good enough that he can’t just turn up and win- he’ll have to work to break those patterns, early on he’ll probably find himself chasing his opponent a little before he gets the timing down and feels him out, and Bivol won’t be helpless once he’s got it, he’ll be trying variations particularly with his jab to reset the process and vary the timing. Ultimately, it isn’t likely to be enough, but it’ll be worth watching to see how it’s done. I’ll take Canelo by late KO.
Mateusz Fenrych: Well, without sounding too ungenerous, because Dmitry Bivol IS good, you can see why Canelo chose him to fight for his next venture up the weights. Let’s mention what Bivol is good at, before we weigh in on why Canelo’s team decided he was a strategically good pick.
He has a rapier-like offence, in that he favours quick in-out sorties before exiting exchanges on his terms. He tends to be pretty linear with his approaches, is a diligent jabber and has a consistent high guard, which means that against the plodders at Light Heavy he can be quite hard to hit.
Against Craig Richards for example, it was enough for the most part to enter on a quick jab, cause Richards to shell up, deploy a usually fairly jab, straight, hook to the body combo then move out before Richards had the chance to unshell and strike back. Notably on occasion when Richards decided to swing with Bivol, Bivol had a harder time anticipating and avoiding return fire.
He does actually have good movement and footwork, but it’s a bit staccato; he shifts in, then he shifts out again on a slightly different angle until he’s managed to get himself away from the ropes.
Which is nice but Canelo is, these days, extremely good at reading movement and cutting it off - see his fights with Caleb Plant and Billy Joe Saunders- with similarly careful, small-step advances, which crucially, he pairs with tactically-placed hooks and other interceptions. And Plant and BJS like to take bigger, more varied movements in and out of range, cutting more drastic angles or varying their tempo and changing up how they enter range.
Bivol… does not really do that. He is methodical almost to a fault, in that he is liable to become predictable fairly quickly to Canelo, who has proven against the likes of Amir Khan, BJS, Plant, Kovalev and yes, GGG that he is perfectly capable of seeing a pattern and exploiting it to the maximum.
And, to make a slightly more recidivist point, Bivol does not appear to be a hard hitter by boxing standards. He may be an established champ but his KO/TKO wins have dried up and well, frankly Canelo has a chin that is as granite-hard as it is bright red. He has only ever looked vaguely buzzed once in his career and that was against the howitzer-fisted GGG and he recovered in mere seconds.
Bivol will simply not be able to keep Canelo off him. A lack of firepower, nice but limited movement and a predictable defence does not look like a happy omen for Bivol against the elite talent that Canelo presents; Canelo figures him out and ends it with a TKO7, or thereabouts.