Ten Weeks Away from Christian Mbilli vs Canelo Alvarez
On Monday, August 17, our training camp officially began.
In ten weeks, Christian Mbilli will step into the ring to face Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.
Writing that sentence puts into perspective, at least a little, the magnitude of what lies ahead.
Canelo isn’t simply another opponent or another world champion. For years, he has been one of the biggest figures in boxing. With him come the spotlight, the media attention, the millions of people who will watch the fight, the purse that comes with an event of this magnitude and, above all, the impact a victory could have on Christian’s career.
For me, this is exactly the kind of challenge I enjoy.
Photo: IG – Canelo Álvarez vs Christian Mbilli
The bigger the fight, the more interesting the preparation becomes. You have to sit down, think, rack your brain and try to anticipate as many things as possible. We are constantly looking for what we could do a little better. We ask ourselves what we might have missed. We challenge certain ideas.
If we always try to give 100% for every athlete and every fight, for a matchup like this, we still have to find a way to get that extra 10%.
There’s a saying: “Without danger, there is no glory in victory.”
There will certainly be danger this time around.
And that’s exactly what excites me.
Ten Weeks, But Not Ten Weeks to Get in Shape
Camp officially began on Monday, but Christian isn’t walking into the gym after spending two months on his couch. He never really stopped training, even during the period when we didn’t yet have a specific date for the fight. So he is starting camp in good physical condition.
That’s important, because a high-level training camp shouldn’t be about getting a boxer back into shape.
It should be about building a performance.
And that’s probably one of the most interesting things to explain to boxing fans: a ten-week camp isn’t a long straight line where you work harder and harder until fight night.
If we did that, we would probably arrive at the fight with a boxer who was exhausted, injured or who had peaked three weeks too early.
The goal isn’t for Christian to be extraordinary in the gym five weeks before the fight.
The goal is for him to be extraordinary on the night he faces Canelo.
Everything in camp is built around that idea.
Photo: IG – Christian Mbilli
Building a Plan
Marc Ramsay is Christian’s head coach. Shawn Collinson and I are his assistants, and our work begins long before the first hard sparring sessions.
At the beginning of camp, Marc presents his vision for the fight. He explains what he sees, what he thinks Christian will need to be able to do and the direction he has in mind. Then he asks us what we think.
It’s a part of the job that the public rarely sees and that I particularly enjoy.
We discuss. We challenge each other’s observations. Each of us brings our own interpretation of certain situations. From there, little by little, a strategy takes shape.
Even though I’d sometimes like to have it, the final word always belongs to Marc because he is the head coach.
Obviously, I’m not going to tell you all the details over the next few weeks. Canelo and his team still have to do some work!
But I can explain how we build the camp around that strategy.
Right now, we are in a period where the workload is high. Christian trains six days a week, sometimes twice a day, and only once on days when we do mitt work.
Photo: IG – Christian Mbilli and Marc Ramsay
During boxing training, we can currently work in blocks of several four-minute rounds. A professional boxing round obviously lasts three minutes, but we are currently using longer rounds because we are in a phase where we want to accumulate volume.
As camp progresses, we will return to three-minute rounds and the work will become increasingly specific to the demands of the fight.
It’s the same logic when it comes to strength and conditioning.
Philippe Goujon has already been working with Christian for quite some time. Now that camp has officially begun, the work is being coordinated even more closely so that every element of the preparation fits together.
Because there is a pretty obvious trap in a camp like this: everyone wants to improve the athlete.
The boxing coach wants to push. The strength and conditioning coach wants to push. The boxer himself wants to push. And when the stakes are this high, the temptation to do even more is even greater.
But Christian only has one body.
Our job is therefore just as much about knowing when to push as it is about knowing when to ease off.
Photo: IG – Christian Mbilli
The Weeks When Things Get Tough
Usually, we truly begin sparring around eight weeks before the fight. Before that, we can use certain technical drills and controlled situations to gradually get Christian back into the rhythm.
The hard sparring comes later.
Around five weeks before the fight, camp should enter its most intense period. That’s when the rounds become more demanding and the work accumulated since the beginning of camp has to start translating into situations that increasingly resemble what we are looking for.
This intensity will continue until approximately two weeks before the fight.
Then, something that may seem counterintuitive will happen: we will start doing less.
This is called the taper.
At that point, you have to trust the work that has been done. We gradually reduce the volume to allow the body to recover and absorb the previous weeks, without losing the qualities we have developed.
It’s a delicate balance.
We want to arrive rested, but not sluggish. Fresh, but still sharp.
You have to resist that little voice that always tells you, “Maybe we should do just a little more.”
How Do You Find Someone to Imitate Canelo?
Another fascinating part of the preparation is choosing sparring partners.
You might think we are simply looking for boxers who physically resemble Canelo. In reality, it’s much more complex.
Before looking for names, we establish characteristics. We look at size, power, speed, style and a boxer’s ability to work in certain areas or give us certain types of reactions.
Then we look for partners who can meet those needs.
For a fight of this magnitude, our budget is also larger than usual. That gives us the ability to bring in several partners throughout camp.
And that’s important, because finding a guy who can perfectly replicate Canelo Alvarez for several weeks would certainly be convenient…
Photo: Espabox – Canelo Álvarez and his team
But that guy probably doesn’t exist. Actually, he does… but his name is Canelo!
So we look for different pieces of the puzzle.
One partner can bring us certain qualities, a second can present different problems and a third can allow us to work on something else.
I’m intentionally going to remain vague about the exact qualities we are looking for.
I want to bring you inside the camp, not mail our game plan to the opposing team.
Watching Canelo… But Also Watching Christian
Video analysis will also play an important role over the next ten weeks.
We have all already done individual work on Canelo. At the beginning of camp, we will now do more structured analysis together. We will return to it at different points throughout the preparation.
But there is another analysis that is just as important: Christian’s.
We will film and analyze his mitt work and sparring sessions. Because you can have the best idea in the world while sitting in front of a screen; it still has to work when another boxer is trying to punch you in the face.
That’s when camp becomes a laboratory.
We watch Canelo. We work on certain things in the gym. We see how Christian reacts when we put them to the test. We analyze what works, what works less well and what needs to be modified.
Then we go back to work.
For ten weeks, we repeat this process.
Photo: Excelsior California – Canelo Álvarez
The Camp’s Real Opponent
There is also a less glamorous reality that is rarely discussed.
Injuries.
In a camp this demanding, it is very rare for an athlete to go through ten weeks without pain or some minor physical issue. The hands, shoulders, elbows, ribs, legs: we ask an enormous amount of the body.
This is probably one of the biggest dangers we face.
So we constantly have to evaluate what is normal, what can be managed and what requires an adjustment.
Sometimes, the best decision for preparing for a fight isn’t to add another round.
It’s to take one away.
It may seem insignificant, but it’s one of the most important responsibilities of a coaching team.
Nobody gets a championship belt for winning training camp.
Why This One Is Different
I could finish by saying that, deep down, Canelo is just another opponent and that we are preparing for this fight exactly like all the ones that came before it.
That wouldn’t be true.
It’s Canelo.
The magnitude of the fight is different. The number of people who will watch it is different. The financial stakes are different. And what a victory could mean for Christian is completely different.
So yes, personally, I feel it.
But I feel it more as excitement than pressure.
I enjoy having to sit down with Marc and Shawn and rack our brains. I enjoy looking for the detail we could improve. I like the idea that we are going to test our ideas in the gym, discover that some of them work and probably realize that others need to be modified.
Because at the end of the day, it’s also a test for us.
Photo: IG – Christian Mbilli and his team
Christian will have the opportunity to show that he belongs at this level.
And we, as a team, will have the opportunity to demonstrate that we are capable of preparing a boxer to beat a fighter like Canelo Alvarez.
If we succeed, the impact will be immense.
But we’re not there yet.
There are still ten weeks to go.
Ten weeks of thinking, working, observing, correcting, pushing and sometimes having the intelligence to slow down.
Ten weeks during which I will try to give you an inside look at this preparation, without, of course, revealing what needs to stay within the walls of the gym.
Today, we are only at the beginning.
In a few weeks, the hard sparring will begin. The fatigue will come too. There will probably be unexpected situations, adjustments and moments when we will wonder whether we are exactly where we want to be.
I’ll tell you all about it.
And in ten weeks, all this work will have to lead to the same place: Christian Mbilli will have to be ready to beat Canelo Alvarez.
Photo: IG – Canelo Álvarez and Christian Mbilli (center)
