Ricky Hatton: Canelo Alvarez now in similar position to Anthony Joshua after Dmitry Bivol loss but he can put it right

In his latest column, the British boxing legend reacts to Canelo Alvarez’s stunning defeat to Dmitry Bivol and Kell Brook’s retirement. He also looks ahead to a huge night for Fightzone as Hannah Rankin puts her world titles on the line.

We all witnessed a major shock last week with Dmitry Bivol putting in an excellent performance to beat Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez in Las Vegas. Russian fighters are so technically sound, very good defensively from amateur level to the professional ranks, from Kostya Tszyu to Bivol. They have always been superb at judging the distance, they make very few mistakes and are very methodical.

Canelo is such a brilliantly versatile fighter but he just couldn’t find the target. Bivol did it with ease and made him work all night.

Bivol’s left jab was great throughout the fight, Canelo has so many strings to his bow but he was not able to figure his opponent out. Rather than giving Canelo an ear bashing over his performance, you have to give all the credit to Bivol.

Canelo made the move up to light-heavyweight a couple of years ago and we saw him handle that the first time around against Sergey Kovalev. But the way Bivol judged the distance and judged the pace of the fight, I have never seen someone deal with him [Canelo] so well since Floyd Mayweather.

Let’s have it right, going down the home straight of a fight is where Canelo puts his foot down and that was the difference in the wins against Billy Joe Saunders and Caleb Plant last year. But this time around, he was lost. He didn’t have a plan and he had completely lost his zip, those stinging punches he usually throws.

Of course, the weight of the shots coming back at him will have had something to do with it, fighting against the naturally bigger man.