🇲🇽 Canelo Goes Up (Again)

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Fight With Teddy Atlas Newsletter, your one stop shop for all things combat sports related, brought to you by Teddy and The Fight team.

Teddy Atlas and co-host Ken Rideout breakdown the Amanda Serrano vs Katie Taylor epic battle, and instant classic, with Taylor edging Serrano by split decision. Teddy and Ken also discuss Shakur Stevenson's dominating win over Oscar Valdez.

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Canelo On The Hunt Again

Canelo loves being the hunter.

Since his sole career loss to Floyd Mayweather back in 2013, Canelo has only defended a world championship (without challenging for further belts in the same fight) twice.

Against Dmitry Bivol, he is the hunter once again, aiming to take his WBA Light Heavyweight strap and became a 2x champion at the weight.

It's a bigger challenge than his last outing at 175 lbs, when he knocked out a competitive but faded Sergey Kovalev in 11 rounds to capture the WBO belt back in 2019.

Bivol is at a totally different proposition to Kovalev.

He's young, undefeated and is on the lookout for a real signature win to cement himself as the best 175 lbs fighter on the planet.

Him and divisional rival Artur Beterbiev are two of the longest serving active world champions, having both picked up their first title within months of each other back in 2017.

Whilst Beterbiev has gone on to unify and establish himself as the top dog at the weight, Bivol's title run has flown somewhat under the radar by comparison.

He doesn't have the fan friendly style of his fellow Russian, and has been tied to a promoter (Matchroom) that doesn't have a great deal of Light Heavyweight talent, so he has been unlucky in some respects.

Despite this, his talent is undeniable.

For his relative young age, he's a real master in the Soviet-school of footwork first boxing. He's very rarely hit clean and has one of the busiest and most educated jabs in the sport.

But this is Canelo Alvarez we're talking about.

He's already cemented himself as the best super middleweight of modern times, and will likely go down as one of the best Mexican boxers of all time.

By moving up to 175 lbs again, this time stepping up the level of competition, he's showing yet another layer of the mentality that's going to put him in the history books.

In Bivol, he has arguably his toughest opponent since GGG, and a win against him will put him on track for potentially becoming undisputed champion in his second weight class.

Whoever wins on Saturday night, they'll have a firm eye on the June 18th clash between Beterbiev and Joe Smith Jr in New York, where the remaining three major belts in the division will be contested.

Who will be victorious? Let's see what Teddy & Ken have to say about it.

Lightweight Fireworks at UFC 274

Charles Oliveira will be looking to fend off the challenge of another former Interim Champion in Justin Gaethje as the main event of UFC 274.

He was buoyed by his underdog status ahead of his first title defence against Dustin Poirier back in December, and went on to produce a sensational submission finish against one of the divisions best.

He comes into this bout with the respect that was earned from that win, and he's now the man at 155 lbs.

Justin Gaethje has been here before. He derailed the potential superfight between Tony Ferguson and Khabib in May 2020 by knocking Ferguson out within 5 rounds, setting himself up to challenge the then champion.

He fell short in what would be Khabib's final fight, getting submitted in round 2, but a fight of the night performance against UFC newcomer Michael Chandler almost exactly a year later has thrown him right back into title contention.

Against the UFC record holder for most submission wins, he'll be looking to keep the fight standing and display some of his Trevor Wittman inspired boxing.

His status as a more seasoned wrestler should also help with keeping the fight on the feet, where he'll have a better chance of eventually being able to catch the champion.

Oliveira is no slouch on the feet however, and although he's been hurt in his previous two title fights, he's shown the championship character to rally and finish the fight.

Elsewhere on the card, common opponents to the two main event fighters face off.

Michael Chandler and Tony Ferguson are both riding losing streaks coming into this, putting even more emphasis on getting back into the win column.

Prior to his KO loss to Gaethje in 2020, Tony Ferguson was on a record breaking 12 fight win streak that stretched back to 2012.

His blend of unorthodox striking and lethal ground game saw him take out the likes of Kevin Lee, Anthony Pettis and Rafael Dos Anjos on his way to what seemed like an inevitable showdown with Khabib.

Flash forward to today, and it's clear for all to see that Tony Ferguson is past his prime, and has gradually slipped out of the top 5 picture.

That being said, it remains to be seen how much he still has in the tank as you go further down in levels in what is still a very competitive division outside the top 5.

Whilst he won't have the athleticism that he had 3/4 years ago, he'll still maintain a lot of the fundamentals that saw him become an elite Lightweight.

Michael Chandler burst onto the scene in early 2021, with a devastating round 1 KO of Dan Hooker in his UFC debut.

Since then, he's lost back to back fights to the the two main event fighters, being finished by Oliveira and being badly hurt and bloodied by Gaethje.

Despite this, it's likely that Chandler has slightly fewer miles on him than Ferguson, and that could favour him in being able to secure the win.

He's not a flashy fighter and does all the MMA fundamentals remarkably well.

He sticks to two to three punch combinations and doesn’t engage in complicated grappling transitions chasing submissions other than scrambles.

Combined with his athletic power, it could see him have just enough to extend Ferguson's losing streak to four.

Fight ⏰ for this weekend

Boxing: Canelo vs Bivol (Saturday 7th/Sunday 8th)

  • 🇺🇸 Full Card: 8pm Eastern/ 5pm Pacific | Main Event: 11pm Eastern/ 8pm Pacific

  • 🇬🇧 Full Card: 1am | Main Event: 4am

  • 🇦🇺 Full Card: 10am Eastern/ 8am Western | Main Event: 1pm Eastern/ 11am Western

UFC 274 (Saturday 7th/Sunday 8th)

  • 🇺🇸 Full Card: 10pm Eastern/ 7pm Pacific | Main Event: 12am Eastern/ 9pm Pacific

  • 🇬🇧 Full Card: 3am | Main Event: 5am

  • 🇦🇺 Full Card: 12pm Eastern/ 10am Western | Main Event: 2pm Eastern/ 12pm Western

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