Canelo Alvarez came out with a clear win over Christian Mbilli over the weekend, but not everyone thinks so highly of his performance. Speaking to Fight Hub TV, David Benavidez explains why he wasn’t impressed by what he saw out of Canelo and believes Canelo owes a better effort to the fans and those who pay him a fortune to fight. Here are some excerpts of what he had to say below.
“He earns all this money, he’s supposed to be the greatest fighter in the world, right?” Benavidez said. “We expect
him to go in there and knock this guy out. We don’t expect him to just go in there and look for counter shots. If the other guy is not throwing any shots, then be Canelo. Go in there, put pressure on, use your defense, use your head movement, go in there — just like how he did it with Caleb Plant…
“So, in my opinion, you’re getting $40M, $50M, that’s a lot of money. You [should] be ready to push it to the limit every single round, from round one to round 12. And I’m not trying to talk sh-t or nothing, but is that not true? Is that not what you guys see? There’s just a lot of waiting going on. As a fighter, Canelo is way better than Mbilli. You guys seen it, he has more tools. It’s just that he wasn’t pursuing the knockout like he should be.
“I think if you’re better than the fighter, you have more skills, put them skills to the test, especially if you’re getting money like that. That’s just the way I think. I think it was a great performance by him but he just needed to — I don’t know, I think he could take all these guys out, could knock them out, especially like Mbilli. Mbilli was fighting scared but you know you’re going to get a guy to fight scared — put the pressure on, do some Julio Cesar Chavez and get that knockout.
“He’s too much of a good fighter to just be cruising like that, especially earning them top dollars.”
