Eddie Hearn says prime Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez beats prime Floyd Mayweather Jr, as Oscar De La Hoya makes a subtle dig at Mexican

Canelo Alvarez's promoter, Eddie Hearn, says the Mexican is the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world and would beat a prime Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Canelo's old promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, may have a differing view though as he took a subtle dig at the undisputed middleweight world champion by comparing his performance against Mayweather Jr to Oscar Valdez's recent defeat to Shakur Stevenson.

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In fairness to De La Hoya, the two fights shared a lot of similarities with a Mexican against an American, aggressive combination punching against precision counter-punching.

One of the main differences is that Canelo was a 23-year-old taking on the highly experienced 36-year-old Mayweather Jr, whereas Oscar Valdez is 31-years-old and he was taking on the less experienced but highly talented Stevenson, who is only 24-years-old.

It is difficult to not take De La Hoya's comment as a subtle dig, bringing up Canelo's only career loss days away from his world title clash with Dmitry Bivol, especially when you take into account the sour history between the pair with Canelo having sued De La Hoya's promotional company, Golden Boy.

The Mexican's current promoter, Eddie Hearn, on the other hand, chose effusive praise rather than subtle digs when talking about Canelo.

When asked by SPORTbible who the number one pound-for-pound boxer in the world is, he replied: "Well, it has to be obviously Matchroom promoted, one of our clients, undisputed super middleweight world champion, Canelo Alvarez."

Hearn continued by talking about who would win in a fight between Canelo and Mayweather Jr, if they were both in their primes.

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"It's a tough question when you talk about Floyd Mayweather against Canelo Alvarez because Floyd was so difficult to beat," Hearn said.

"But, at the same time I think Canelo Alvarez was 21 or 22 when he fought him.

"So, he is twice the fighter he was then. Could he beat Floyd Mayweather in his prime? I think so."

On Saturday night, Canelo will not be worrying about Mayweather, but instead the WBA light heavyweight champion, Dmitry Bivol, as the pair are set to clash at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.