By Chris Williams: Number #1 on his Christmas wish list for 2012 was a fight against unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. next for WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (39-0-1, 29 KO’s), but now that Mayweather is heading for jail for 90 days starting on January 6th, Alvarez has downsized his dreams a little.
The 21-year-old Alvarez now wants a unification bout with WBA Super World junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KO’s) or a fight against his #2 ranked World Boxing Council contender James Kirkland (30-1, 27 KO’s). Both of those fights are certainly doable ones for the young Alvarez, because Kirkland, 27, fights out of the same Golden Boy Promotions stable as Alvarez so it’s definitely a makeable fight.
A bout against Cotto is also a fight that can be made now that Cotto’s contract with Top Rank Promotions has run out and he’s on a fight by fight basis. As long as Cotto can convince Arum to make the fight for him, then we could see a Cotto-Alvarez fight in the next four months. However, Cotto just finished beating Antonio Margarito last month on December 3rd in a 10th round stoppage win, so it’s not likely that Cotto will be ready to fight by April or May, which are the two months that Alvarez is looking to fight next.
He’s reportedly looking at April 21st or May 5th, and it’s highly unlikely that Cotto will be able to get himself in gear by then. If Cotto was a starving fighter, he’d take the fight tomorrow, but he’s been making big money in the last couple of years and that’s probably going to cause him to be too slow for Alvarez.
As for Kirkland, I think Golden Boy will try and talk Alvarez out of making this fight due to the danger involved for him. They’ve done a great job of matching Alvarez against older or weaker opposition that wouldn’t be a threat to him. All you have to do is look at Alvarez’s last six opponents – Kermit Cintron, Alfonso Gomez, Ryan Rhodes, Matthew Hatton, Lovemore N’dou and Carlos Baldomir – to see that Golden Boy has been lobbing the ball to Alvarez. If you break with that pattern and put him in with someone that can actually fight and who has big power like Kirkland, we could see Alvarez exposed and ruined in front of the entire world. That’s why I see Golden Boy setting limits for Alvarez and telling him no for the Kirkland bout.
What we’ll likely see in with Alvarez is the old toothless lion, 40-year-old Shane Mosley. As long as Golden Boy are cool with Mosley for having taken the Manny Pacquiao fight, then I think Mosley might be dragged out for Alvarez to tear to pieces for his April or May fight. Mosley is absolutely no threat to Alvarez at this point and he can add a scalp with a name on it to his resume. And the best part of all, a certain percentage of the boxing public will think Alvarez is beating a prime Mosley and will become instant followers of Alvarez after this fight.
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