David Benavidez thinks Canelo Alvarez will wipe out Christian Mbilli, but that claim crashes right into cold reality. Canelo has gone eight straight bouts without stopping anyone. While he might catch an aggressive fighter coming in, betting on him to walk through Mbilli ignores five years of ring evidence.
Canelo’s last stoppage came in November 2021 when he finished Caleb Plant in round eleven. Every single opponent since has heard the final bell. He floored several along the way, yet his knockout tally sits frozen at 39 across six wins alongside two losses.
“I think that Canelo walks through him. I think that Canelo is a great fighter; he is levels above Mbilli. I don’t disrespect Mbilli, but I don’t think that he is on Canelo’s level, and it is a great fight for Canelo, stylistically,” Benavidez said to DAZN Boxing.
Benavidez sounds like he is running on pure reputation rather than recent tape. Anyone watching Canelo closely over the last half-decade knows the days of him walking guys down and wiping them out are long gone. Benavidez is analyzing the brand, not the current fighter.
The Plant fight pinpoints the contest that seems to have changed something in Canelo. The history books record an eleventh-round stoppage win for Alvarez, but the physical toll of that night tells a completely different story. Plant was tagging him clean with flush, snapping uppercuts and sharp combinations.
Even when Canelo was walking forward, his head was getting rocked back repeatedly. A fighter can show an iron chin in the moment, but the body absorbs every single one of those impacts. That grueling scrap seems to be the exact dividing line where the bill came due.
When you look at Canelo since that night, the physical decline is impossible to miss. The explosive head movement has faded into a high guard. Back when he destroyed guys, he slipped punches by inches and made them pay with blistering combinations. Now, he mostly covers up, catches leather on his arms and gloves, and lets the impact jar him. That subtle loss in reflexes means he has to brace for impact rather than making guys miss and look silly.
Additionally, the stamina cliff is real. Canelo is essentially a fighter with four or five good rounds of explosive energy in the tank. To make twelve rounds without completely emptying his engine, he has to ration every single movement. He throws single power hooks, rests against the ropes, and resets.
You cannot score stoppages against durable world-class fighters when you are throwing thirty punches a round and taking large stretches of each three-minute block off. He still possesses single-shot power, but one punch rarely knocks top guys out cold without combinations behind it.
Against Ryder, Munguia, and Berlanga, he landed that big clubbing shot to score a flash knockdown, then immediately lacked the sustained gas tank to step on the throttle and put them away. He let all three off the hook simply because pressing for the finish carried too high a risk of gassing out.
Mbilli is an absolute freight train when it comes to punch volume and pace. If Benavidez expects Canelo to just push through that kind of engine and blast Mbilli out of there, he is ignoring how much energy it takes to keep a relentless 31-year-old off your chest. Canelo will find counter opportunities early, but surviving Mbilli’s pressure across twelve rounds is going to test that dwindling gas tank to its absolute limit.
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Boxing • Canelo Alvarez • David Benavidez’s Canelo Knockout Pick Ignores Eight Fights