If Edgar Berlanga is serious about matching wits with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in the ring, he may be in even more trouble than anyone thought.
Puerto Rico’s Berlanga will attempt an almost unimaginable leap into a matchup with three-belt unified super middleweight champion Canelo in the main event of a Mexican Independence Day weekend extravaganza on Sept. 14 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Berlanga (22-0, 17 KOs), who most recently knocked out Padraig McCrory in February, has never faced an opponent nearly the caliber of Alvarez (61-2-2, 39 KOs), nor stepped into a spotlight this bright. But at Tuesday’s press conference at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, he assured that he is ready for the task ahead.
“Like I said before,” Berlanga said of Alvarez, “he’s fought everybody. He’s fought Floyd [Mayweather Jr.], he’s fought [Gennady Golovkin], he’s seen size, he’s seen speed. But what makes it different about this fight is not about physical; it’s about IQ and intelligence, and that’s what gonna make the difference on Sept. 14.”
But the notion of Berlanga relying on ring IQ or a calculated in-ring approach to beat Alvarez likely defies the imagination of anyone who has paid attention to both fighters’ careers. As Berlanga himself mentioned, Alvarez has fought a variety of top-quality opposition – including Mayweather, GGG, Dmitry Bivol, Miguel Cotto, Jermell Charlo, Erislandy Lara and Caleb Plant – over a long career in which he has evolved and steadily added new information to his fight database.
That isn’t to say Berlanga, 27, can’t or won’t think his way through a fight when the time comes. It just means we haven’t seen it – particularly against an opponent as experienced and cerebral as the 34-year-old veteran Canelo.
Marc Farrait, Berlanga’s trainer, acknowledged the difficulty in testing the ring IQ of Alvarez.
“I’m not here to talk about what we’re going to do and how we’re going to fight Canelo,” Farrait said. “There have been so many other trainers that stood here before and said the same thing. So we’re here to work hard. Edgar is gonna die out there, put his heart and soul out there, and he’s gonna come to work and there’s going to be no running.”
Unfortunately for Berlanga, it’s that style that is a key reason he was hand-picked by Alvarez for this matchup in the first place. Although Farrait vowed that Berlanga would be ready for fight night, his fighter will almost certainly need more than brute power and a come-forward approach to pull off the upset.
For his part, Berlanga seemed to understand the mandate, at least during certain moments of Tuesday’s presser.
“You can have all the power in the world, you can do what you do,” he said. “But at this level, it’s intelligence and IQ, and we’re gonna end up like that.”
But can he avoid giving in to his basest instincts on fight night?
“I’m gonna break everything in your face,” he told Alvarez. “It’s gonna be fireworks.”
Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, has contributed to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be followed on X and LinkedIn, and emailed at dorf2112@hotmail.com.