By Dan Ambrose: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (37-0-1, 27 KO’s) really won over a lot of boxing fans with his impressive 12th round knockout win over Britain’s Ryan Rhodes on June 18th in a one-sided slaughter. Alvarez, only 20, is now looking for his next fight on September 17th, possibly against former two division world champ Ricardo Mayorga (29-8-1, 23 KO’s) in Mexico.
The fight will be shown on the same telecast as Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fight against WBC welterweight champion Victor Ortiz in a split site HBO broadcast. Alvarez has an optional defense for his next fight because Rhodes was his mandatory and now that’s out of the way Alvarez can take a relatively easy fight for his next bout.
Golden Boy Promotions, the promoters for Alvarez, aren’t exactly thinking easy by looking at the 38-year-old Mayorga, because he can still fight as we saw in his recent 12th round knockout loss to WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in March. Mayorga gave Cotto all kinds of problems before getting taken out in the last minute of the fight.
HBO analyst Roy Jones Jr. said this about Alvarez in an article at mysantonio.com: “He looks Irish, understands Spanish and fights like George Foreman.”
Alvarez is hugely popular in his native Mexico, partly because of his looks. There are very few red-haired Mexicans. He doesn’t look Mexican at all and stands out in a country with mostly brown haired people. However, he’s quickly become very popular because he can really fight and reminds one of the best qualities of Juan Manuel Marquez, and like Jones said, George Foreman. Alvarez can really punch and goes after his opponents to take them apart bit by bit. He’s not as deliberate as Foreman used to be, but his results are every bit as effective.
Mayora will be a great option for Alvarez because he’s got a name that casual boxing fans know and he can still fight. Most of the other junior middleweight contenders are unknown fighters and it would hardly be worth it for Alvarez to take on one of them. He’ll likely have to face top contender Vanes Martirosyan in early 2012, but for the time being Alvarez is going to take on someone that boxing fans have actually heard of and that’s likely going to be Mayorga.
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