Ricky Hatton compares Canelo Alvarez to Anthony Joshua after Dmitry Bivol loss

Ricky Hatton has compared Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez‘s loss to Dmitry Bivol to Anthony Joshua‘s defeat to Oleksandr Usyk.

The former two-weight world champion came to the defence of the Mexican superstar after he suffered a shock upset at the hands of the Russian on Saturday night.

And the British boxing legend also said there’s nothing wrong with daring to be great.

Canelo Alvarez may have come up short on this occasion but Hatton insists he can still take away some positives from the second defeat of his career.

Writing in his Metro column, Hatton said: “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