By Allen Fox: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez added another scalp to his flimsy resume with a win over a shot looking Kermit Cintron last night in Mexico. A lot of boxing fans are excited about Alvarez all of a sudden and see him a star in the making.
However, it’s going to be difficult to ever see Alvarez as any more than a pampered paper champion unless he finally takes on a real threat. Yes, Alvarez called out Floyd Mayweather Jr. last night for a fight on May 5th of next year, but that’s a fight where Alvarez doesn’t lose anything when he gets beaten.
Of course, he’ll lose the fight because he’s nowhere near as good as Mayweather is. However, it would give Alvarez a big payday and it would make him known worldwide instead of mainly just Mexico. But Alvarez has got to start facing the best fighters in the junior middleweight division if he wants to prove something. If you look at Alvarez’s last eight opponents you’ll notice that it’s not a very impressive list. Here are the last eight guys that Alvarez has fought:
Kermit Cintron
Alfonso Gomez
Ryan Rhodes
Matthew Hatton
Lovemore N’dou
Carlos Baldomir
Luciano Leonel Cuello
Jose Miguel Cotto
Now those are decent fringe contenders and/or 2nd tier fighters but no one there was really a threat to Alvarez. He was put in with mostly soft opposition by his promoters, who still appear to be protecting him for some reason despite the fact that he holds a major world title. Once Alvarez became a world champion, he really needed to start facing the best fighters instead of being put in with set up fights that he could win without any problems.
If Alvarez wants to prove himself to boxing fans he needs to fight the following guys:
Miguel Cotto
Antonio Margarito
Erislandy Lara
Sergiy Dzinziruk
Austin Trout
Vanes Martirosyan
Cornelius Bundradge
Carlos Molina
James Kirkland
Alfredo Angulo
Paul Williams
Pawel Wolak
Do I see Alvarez fighting any of these guys in 2012? Nope. I think Alvarez is being protected and what we’ll see in the future will be pretty much a repeat of things in the past with him. In other words, Alvarez will continue to be carefully matched with the exception of a payday bout against Mayweather possibly, which won’t tell us anything about Alvarez. We already know he can’t beat Mayweather. What we want to know is whether Alvarez can beat the the top 12 guys in the junior middleweight division.
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