A legendary boxing coach believes that Terence Crawford could have turned the pressure up on Canelo Alvarez.
After convincingly winning a decision at Allegiant Stadium on Saturday night, the new undisputed super middleweight champion has received a lot of praise.
Alvarez may have beaten Crawford in one statistic, but there is no denying who the better man was on September 13.
Roy Jones Jr. even made a case for Crawford gaining an edge over his opponent before they had even stepped inside the ring.
While ‘Bud’ has understandably received a lot of praise, there were questions asked about the man that suffered the third loss of his career this past weekend.
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Teddy Atlas believes Canelo Alvarez could have quit if Terence Crawford put it on him
Several notable names have criticized Canelo Alvarez’s performance on Saturday night.
Teddy Atlas believes that Terence Crawford could have made this an even more difficult night for his opponent if he had chosen to really put it on him.
The legendary boxing coach recently reflected on the bout during an episode of his THE FIGHT podcast, where he claimed that Crawford could have made Alvarez quit.
“I don’t try to put salt in the wounds of the great Mexican fans, and they are great. But, I think, and again, it’s my judgement, I think that if Crawford, which would have probably been reckless, but if he would have pushed it a little more the last couple rounds, I think there’s a chance Canelo quits.
“I know what my eyes told me. I know what the body language told me. He was breaking down. He was frustrated. He was hopeless.”
Atlas has made it clear that he didn’t hold Alvarez on the same pedestal that many others did in the first place, though he wouldn’t have been the first superstar to admit defeat.
“We saw it with a fighter we never thought we’d see it with many years ago,” Atlas recalled. “With one of the greatest fighters that I admire more than most fighters, the hands of stone, Roberto Duran. I’m just saying.”
Duran famously quit in the eighth round of his 1980 rematch with ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard after becoming incredibly frustrated with how the fight was going, supposedly telling the referee “no mas”, or “no more”.
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Teddy Atlas believes Canelo Alvarez’s first mistake was signing the contract
From the moment the fight was announced, Teddy Atlas was confident that Terence Crawford was going to be the victor on September 13.
He points to the things that you can’t teach a fighter like confidence and natural instincts as the elements that he knew would separate the two men.
Atlas also believes that before a punch was thrown, Alvarez had made his first mistake in signing the contract in the first place, comparing this fight to his previous loss to Dmitry Bivol.
“I said it myself before, I knew when he signed the contract. When he signed the contract, I knew that Canelo was making a mistake, that he had no idea like he didn’t have an idea what Bivol was. He had no idea.”