Thread: A comparison of Canelo, Cotto & Maidana’s approach at solving the ‘Michigan shell’ when they had Mayweather against the ropes. I’ll be looking at why the last two were more successful than Alvarez, and breaking down some of the things they did that caught my eye.

There’s a number of good things Canelo does here. When Mayweather folds over his hip to avoid Canelo’s 1-2, Canelo swings his rear leg around whilst keeping his lead foot on the inside of Mayweather’s to prevent the American from ducking-and-pivoting out.

The lead foot placement acts as a barrier and obstructs Mayweather from escaping, whilst Canelo can then wrap his arms around Mayweather and move him back towards the ropes.

Mayweather rotates his upper-body to the left slightly when throwing an uppercut. Canelo fires a left hook to the body to make him rotate further - in the opposite direction Mayweather wants to, as in the Michigan shell you want to rotate inwards so the shoulder protects the chin

Because he’s rotating outwards, the chin is briefly exposed - giving Canelo a small window to land the right hand. He does exactly that.

Canelo then takes advantage of Mayweather’s tendency to bring his rear glove upwards to defend the left hook, instead targeting the body with the space under Mayweather’s elbow being exposed.

Whilst Canelo had spots of success like I pointed out above, he often played into Mayweather’s hands on the ropes. He gave Mayweather too much room to pull back & duck, and was too predictable at times which allowed Mayweather to utilise the shell’s counter-punching properties.

Case in point.

Look how Maidana shuts down Mayweather’s duck-and-pivot in a style very similar to the Canelo clip. He brings his rear leg around whilst keeping his lead foot inside Mayweather’s, and forces him more upright with a shovel hook. Maidana then grabs Mayweather and pushes him back.

One thing Maidana did better than Canelo was taking away Mayweather’s room to pull back against the ropes, chiefly by putting his head on Mayweather’s chest and pushing him. This straightened Mayweather up and forced him to rely more on his forearms, as well as exposing the body.

And again. You can see that a lot of Mayweather’s typical defensive responses, such as ducking low or pulling back, are taken away here. Maidana is effectively crowding Floyd and landing to the body.

One thing Maidana also did was exploit Mayweather’s right-side, by mixing up the levels on his hooks to manipulate Mayweather’s rear glove and create openings. We’ve seen numerous Mayweather opponents have success with this, from Castillo to Canelo.

Whilst Maidana’s crowding approach may have been effective, it was also exhausting and would have contributed to the Argentine running out of steam later on. Miguel Cotto opted for a more efficient approach, opportunistically taking advantage of what Mayweather gave him.

Similarly to how Canelo did so, look how Cotto creates a window for that right hand by hooking to the body, which manipulates Mayweather to rotate outwards and *slightly* square himself up in the process.

Cotto jabs, and Mayweather folds over his right hip to avoid what he anticipates to be a follow-up right hand. But Cotto is patient, and instead uses his gloves to briefly control Mayweather’s head before creating an opening to the body & landing a left hook.