By Dan Ambrose: Promoter Lou Dibella obviously has no love lost with Saul Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., both of which he’s not too impressed with in terms of talent despite their unbeaten records and title belts.
In an interview by Mike Marley at examiner.com, Dibella said “Chavez Jr. is deathly afraid of Sergio [Martinez]. As for Canelo [Saul Alvarez], he is no better. Is he a big deal in Mexico? Yes, he is because of his skin coloring and his orange hair. If he was more a more typical Mexican guy with dark hair and dark eyes, nobody would care about him.”
Ouch! I do agree with Dibella about Chavez. I think the guy wants no part of facing the hard hitting Martinez, because if he did he’d have pushed hard to get that fight with his promoter. Martinez has been looking to get a fight against Chavez Jr. for ages without luck, and recently the WBC mandated that Chavez Jr. has to fight Martinez. But the fight still isn’t happening and it likely won’t even though the World Boxing Council has ordered it to take place.
Alvarez is kind of a different case. Yes, I think his hair color and white skin likely helps a little because it sets him apart from the other fighters in Mexico, but Alvarez also has excellent skills and is one of the bigger fighters. There aren’t a lot of really good Mexican fighters at junior middleweight. As far as I can tell, Alfredo Angulo and Antonio Margarito are the tops, and Margarito has a big following in Mexico.
So I don’t see this as a case of Alvarez being popular just because of his red hair and white skin. He’s popular because he can fight and seems to have adopted some of the things he’s seen from Floyd Mayweather Jr. and some of the other popular fighters. He still looks kind of stiff and not particularly fast, but he’s in a weak division and will do well there unless he grows out of it.
At middleweight, Alvarez may have problems due to his limited 5’9” height. Golden Boy needs to do whatever they can to keep Alvarez at 154 because he may have problems against the bigger middleweights if and when he moves up in weight someday. At 21, it’s almost a given that Alvarez will soon be growing out of the junior middleweight division and that’s going to be a problem for him when he’s put in with big guys like 6’1” Peter Quillin and some of the other big middleweights.
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