"Defense is Floyd's greatest strength, but it's also his greatest weakness because he goes defensive too much sometimes...The funny thing is nobody would think about knockout in this fight, especially on the side of Floyd, but Alvarez has one flaw. He stands in front of you sometimes straight up at a distance and he tries to block everything, and you can land some punches on him when he does that," stated ESPN commentator and world-class trainer Teddy Atlas, who gave his breakdown on the highly-anticipated September 14 showdown between undefeated pound-for-pound king Floyd "Money" Mayweather and undefeated jr. middleweight champion Saul "Canelo" Alvarez. Check it out!



TEDDY ATLAS ON MAYWEATHER VS. CANELO



I think it will be a tough fight, but it's not the fight that everyone thinks. It's not the seek and destroy guy against the slickster who is a ghost and you never see him in the ring. Alvarez is not really a seek and destroy guy. First of all, he has better hand speed than people give him credit for, and his temperament is to box; not to run and move, but to control the ring on the outside, control the center of the ring, use his hand speed putting punches together, and go to the body, but not really to engage you or invest in a real aggressive fight. He keeps you in front of him, but he likes to control range. And he does most things...if you watch him and you really know what you're watching, most of his punches are with a little extension. They are not in the trenches where he is hunkered down to be in that kind of fight. They think it's going to be a guy that's just walking to Floyd all night. I don't think so. I think he's going to try and use the jab and try and show his hand speed just to show that he is in the same neighborhood or close to the same neighborhood as Floyd. Floyd gets the edge in that department, obviously, but he's going to want to show that he's not that far behind. And he's going to want to show that he can take advantage of the thing that Floyd gives you a chance to take advantage of, which is to outwork him sometimes. It's to take advantage of the thing that he does the best and it's also his greatest weakness, his defense.



Defense is Floyd's greatest strength, but it's also his greatest weakness because he goes defensive too much sometimes. And when he's doing that and he's bobbing up and down like a buoy in the water in the Pacific Ocean, waves have a chance to bump against that buoy. Well, punches have a chance to throw at that buoy too, if you know what you're throwing, if you have the right direction, the right trainer, and the right intellect himself; Alvarez being the guy that I'm talking about. He can go to the body because Floyd's body is there, especially on the left side of his body.



Good thing Sugar Ray Robinson ain't around because Sugar Ray Robinson would have had something for Floyd. And I like Floyd. I'm one of the guys that is a supporter of him in a lot of ways, but he if Sugar Ray Robinson was around in this era, he used to throw a, sort of a curved right hand to the body that was vicious. It was on the borderline of hitting you in the kidneys. But man, it was a vicious punch, and Floyd leaves himself open to that punch. Now, I don't know if it is in the repertoire of Alvarez. I haven't seen it. It's mostly left hooks from Alvarez, but I have seen him use a right hand to the body, mostly in the form of an uppercut on the inside. But if he's got the right people around him that watch things that I watch, I'd be looking for that punch to be showing itself come September 14th because it's there and available.



But like I said, for Floyd, his greatest strength is his greatest weakness. His defense is terrific and he makes you miss, gives him a better chance to stay in the fight, and then he makes you available to him, but sometimes he makes defensive moves when I think he could be doing more offensive things and he gives you a chance to fire at him. I think he is going to give Alvarez a chance to fire at him, and he has fast hands and the ability to put punches together pretty well and the ability to go to the body. I think because of his size and his hand speed, I think it will be a...like I said, he's not a seek and destroy guy who is going to walk into traps all night. He is a calculating guy, Alvarez. Like I said, he likes to keep a little distance and he looks to fire at you from that distance. He doesn't walk right in where he is going to walk into a trap door.



The funny thing is nobody would think about knockout in this fight, especially on the side of Floyd, but Alvarez has one flaw. He stands in front of you sometimes straight up at a distance and he tries to block everything, and you can land some punches on him when he does that. Again, I've seen it. I don't know if Floyd's seen it. Floyd has a good intellect. I would think he's seen it. There is a question of whether Floyd's seen it and does he have the physical equipment to do it if he does. I think it's the temperament. I think if this was Sugar Ray Robinson or Sugar Ray Leonard fighting Alvarez, then I would pick Sugar Ray Leonard by knockout. The reason is because I see this flaw where Alvarez stands straight up and tries to block, and he handcuffs himself. I talk about that on Friday Night Fights sometimes. He gives you a chance to really run punches on him and it's available while he's stationary and you can really run punches on him.



The only problem with that opportunity, although Floyd has the same or close to the same skill sets as Leonard, so it's not like he doesn't have the ability to do the same thing, but I don't think he has the temperament to go and do that. Floyd's not a guy that looks to go and get you out of there. He's a guy that looks to outscore you and if he gets you, he gets you, but he looks to win the fight the way he looks to win the fight, which is in a caculating and controlled, careful and defensive manner. But I do see that opportunity. I always say people born round don't die square, so people don't usually change their temperament, so that's kind of my curiosity about this fight. Does Floyd see what I saw? I watched some film and I'm going to talk about it on SportsCenter the week of the fight because I'm covering it for SportsCenter and ESPN, so I'm doing the work and I'm thinking, "Does Floyd see what I'm seeing?" I have a lot of respect for Floyd and his intellect, not just his physical ability. I'm saying to myself, "Is he seeing what I'm seeing," and if so, I'm wondering if that's why he took the fight? I wonder if he's saying to himself, "You know what? Not only can I win this fight, but I can do something that nobody...nobody would dream I can do...I can knock him out! I could actually blitz this guy and get rid of him."



Again, it does come down to your temperament and what's in your core of what you're comfortable of doing that is you, and that's not really him. But it doesn't mean that he can't see and recognize it, and I just wonder if he has. But at the end of the day, I think because of the youth, because of the size, and the things I just described, and because of Floyd not being a guy that will usually run on you and get you out of there and gives you a chance to work and gives you an opportunity to stay in the game so to speak, make you hustle a little bit; that's why his punch numbers aren't real high. He gives you those pit stops where you could do something during those pit stops when he's on the defensive, and in that defensive mode, he gives you those opportunities to get some work in. I think at the end of the day, I like Floyd winning the fight. I'm the opposite of everyone else. I think if anyone stops anyone, most people would think it would be Alvarez stopping Floyd, but for me, I think Floyd could have a chance to kind of blitz him a little bit. But at the end of the day, I would probably say Floyd wins a decision, and maybe a decision that's contested too.

[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]