Sports

the fight adds to Canelo's legacy, or takes away from Charlo's. People tend to forget that even as a middleweight, Canelo re-hydrated and entered the ring at the same weight that Rocky Marciano fought at. Yet I still see some people saying that Charlo was "bigger" because he was taller. These are people who have never boxed, I assume. (Or id they did box, they took too many punches to the head.)

At this moment in time, I think Bud is the best active fighter. I'm not saying that only because of the Spence fight. Bud has crushed top oppents for some time. Yet if I were advising him, I'd recommend not fighting Canelo. While it would make for a huge pay-day, it is too big a jump in size. Could Bud win? It's possible, but not likely, due to size. Good big guys beat good small guys, and one can substitute "great" for "good" here.

However, it is not possible to convince certain fighters that they can't beat any/every one. For example, Ali could not have done what he did if he wasn't fully convinced he could beat anyone. And that was a factor in his loses, too. More recently, a lot of people found Floyd Mayweather to be obnoxious because of his view of himself as the "greatest." But someone with self-doubt could not have accomplished what he did in the ring. (I note that Canelo's team had said he would fight Floyd at a weight slightly below the limit, and Floyd jumped on that. He knew that a couple of pounds makes a huge difference. But his style was way different than Bud's.)

When I was a young fighter, a guy who had fought twice -- both times against my oldest brother, losing both in one round knockouts -- told my brother that while he really liked me as a person, he thought it odd that I was convinced I could beat any one in the ring (or outside of it). My brother told him that I couldn't do what I did, if I had any self-doubt. Not that I always won ..... for example, when I was 15, I watched an ex-Marine fighting in the Olympic trials on ABC's Wide World of Sports. I remember thinking, "I'd destroy him!" So I challenged him to a fight. I was too young to officially fight in the AAU, and I wasn't in his weight class. But going into the main event on that card, I was ready to beat his ass. But it didn't work out the way I planned! Ha!