By Allen Fox: 21-year-old WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (39-0-, 29 KO’s) is the leading candidate to face WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (42-0, 26 KO’s) on May 5th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Alvarez is Mexican and May 5th is the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, which means it’s going to be either Alvarez or two-time world champion Robert Guerrero who end up facing Mayweather on that date.
Mayweather would prefer to fight WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao next, but his promoter Bob Arum is saying that his cut he suffered last November still might not be healed by that date and he doesn’t want to risk it. With Pacquiao unable to fight, Mayweather has to pick from Alvarez and Guerrero. It’s easy choice for Mayweather and his team to make. Guerrero doesn’t have much of a fan base outside of Northern California where he lives in Gilroy, California, a city that neighbors San Jose, California.
Alvarez has a huge fan base in Mexico, but still is picking up fans slowly but surely now that his fights are being televised on HBO. Alvarez’s promoters at Golden Boy would like to see him get more experience before he faces a big fight, but when you’re talking about Mayweather then that’s a whole different matter. Alvarez will make big bucks for this fight and he already has said he wants Mayweather next. It really doesn’t matter if Alvarez loses, he’ll pick up a lot of fans in the process just through the publicity he’ll receive in the months leading up to the fight in addition to the fight itself.
Alvarez could give Mayweather some problems with his power, boxing skills and inside game. He’s a lot more solid fighter in terms of fundamentals and maturity than Mayweather’s last opponent Victor Ortiz. Alvarez keeps his composure and thinks on his feet. He’s not going to get flustered the way that Ortiz did if he has problems landing his shots. However, Alvarez likes to go to the body, so he won’t be affected as much if he’s unable to hit Mayweather with head shots. Due to his excellent defensive skills, Mayweather is hard to hit cleanly to the head. But he can be hit to the body. We’ve seen that in his fights against Ricky Hatton, Juan Manuel Marquez and Jose Luis Castillo.
Floyd hasn’t fought a real body puncher for years, so this would be a rare fight for him where he has to deal with someone that’s not concentrating on trying to land his head. All the tricks that Mayweather likes to do on defensive to avoid getting hit up top will be meaningless in a fight against Alvarez. He’ll have to come up with a different strategy for this fight.
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