Canelo Alvarez reflects on Terence Crawford loss: 'If your mind is not there, it's not the same'
· Yahoo Sports
Saul "Canelo" Alvarez knows exactly what went wrong in his loss to Terence Crawford last September.
"I feel great [looking back on the fight]. It's already happened — I cannot control [it]," Alvarez said on Uncrowned's "The Ariel Helwani Show" this week. " I know what I did bad — not bad [but] wrong. I think we sometimes go out of bases. I did everything good in the training camp, but my mind wasn't there. ... I feel like I wasn't there, [I was] thinking about other things."
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The Mexican says his defeat to Crawford had little to do with his physical ability and everything to do with where his mind was during the week of the fight.
"A lot of things happened in the fight week, so sometimes we are going out of bases — [we are not] focused on the fight, [or] focused on boxing. Like I say, I did everything good in the camp. I always train very hard, but not just that, you can be physically ready, but if your mind is not there, it's not the same."
Alvarez explained he was not mentally focused on the task at hand, which he believes affected his overall preparation, including his weight cut and rehydration, and ultimately contributed to the defeat.
Crawford impressed most of the boxing world last September in Las Vegas because, as the naturally smaller man, he went up multiple weight classes and still performed at an elite level.
One man who was not surprised by what Crawford brought to the table that night, however, was Alvarez.
"No [he wasn't better than I thought he'd be]," Alvarez told Uncrowned. "[I knew] he's a good fighter. I never doubted how good he is. He is a very good fighter, he's very intelligent — he has everything.
"Nothing [impressed me about him] because I knew [how talented he was]."
Alvarez and Crawford appeared to be headed for a second meeting until Crawford announced his shocking retirement from the sport last December. Alvarez, who didn't have an industry-standard rematch clause despite being the bigger star and the fight being a voluntary defense, was left as the real loser of Crawford's decision to walk away.
"Yeah, I'm surprised [he announced his retirement] because as a fighter, we want a rematch, right? We want to show again," Alvarez said. "And I always did good in my rematches. It surprised me a lot, but it is what it is. It's his life, it's his career, and I can do nothing with that.
"I [still] hope the rematch can [happen]. If not, it's fine, we need to move forward."
Alvarez still holds hope that Crawford — like so many boxers in recent years — will come out of retirement and dance with him one more time. But for now his focus is on his upcoming fight with WBC super middleweight champion Christian Mbilli, which Alvarez says will take place Oct. 31 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.