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LAS VEGAS – Canelo Alvarez chuckled when a reporter reminded him that Andre Ward predicted that Caleb Plant would knock him out Saturday night.
“Wow! But we’ll see,” a smiling Alvarez said. “It’s gonna be a knockout, for sure.”
The heavily favored Alvarez has promised a knockout of his own, at some point between the seventh and ninth rounds, when he opposes Plant in their 12-round, 168-pound title unification fight at MGM Grand Garden Arena. Plant is undefeated (21-0, 12 KOs), but he is not considered a puncher.
The 31-year-old Alvarez also has displayed one of the most reliable chins in boxing throughout an illustrious career in which he has won world titles in four weight classes. He withstood Gennadiy Golovkin’s vaunted power in each of their 12-round fights and wasn’t fazed by Sergey Kovalev’s punches during their WBO light heavyweight title fight two years ago at MGM Grand Garden Arena.
The undefeated Ward, who has been retired for four years, helped Plant prepare in a limited capacity for the biggest fight of his career. Though a Ward-Alvarez fight has been mentioned many times since Alvarez moved up from the middleweight division to super middleweight, facing the 37-year-old Ward wasn’t something that was on Alvarez’s mind after their press conference Wednesday at MGM Grand.
“I don’t wanna say that,” Alvarez said. “Maybe he wants to come out of retirement to fight me, but we’ll see.”
As for how he’ll approach Plant, another reporter wondered whether Alvarez would need to avoid “falling in love with his power” while trying to knock out Plant in their Showtime Pay-Per-View main event (9 p.m. EDT; $79.99).
“No,” Alvarez replied, “I’m in love with my power.”
Alvarez (56-1-2, 38 KOs), of Guadalajara, Mexico, has won three of his four super middleweight matches by knockout or technical knockout. He knocked out Kovalev in the 11th round of his only fight at the light heavyweight limit in November 2019.
Alvarez believes he has carried his power up through multiple divisions because he doesn’t drain himself to make weight the way he did when he was a middleweight or a junior middleweight.
“[I’m strong] when I’m moving up in weight because I’m not losing too much weight,” Alvarez said. “For me, I lose my power when I lose so much weight. That’s why. And this weight class, I feel strong, I feel good. I still cut weight, but it’s not the same.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.