By Dan Ambrose: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) is a belt holder, but his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions has brought him along in the past year like he’s a prospect by matching him against weaker, smaller or older fighters well past their prime.
Sadly, the trend continues with his next fight on September 15th. Golden Boy has dredged up a light welterweight Josesito Lopez (30-4, 18 KO’s) to fight the 22-year-old Alvarez instead of a top junior middleweight contender like Erislandy Lara or Vanes Martirosyan. You know you’ve got a promoter that is protecting a fighter when they’re digging up 40-year-old opponents like Shane Mosley, welterweights like Matthew Hatton, and light welterweights like Josesito Lopez for Alvarez to fight instead of actual junior middleweight contenders.
Golden Boy may he counting on the casual boxing fans to tune in to the Alvarez fight in droves, perhaps hoping that they don’t understand that Lopez doesn’t even fight in the same division as Alvarez. Hardcore boxing fans know this, but the casual boxing fans may only be aware of Lopez as the guy that recently outlasted Victor Ortiz when he quit after suffering a broken jaw. Lopez would have lost that fight had Ortiz not quit. That takes the excitement away for a lot of hardcore boxing fans who DO know that Lopez isn’t a junior middleweight and DO know that he was on his way to losing the Ortiz fight.
Golden Boy should have done a better job in picking out an opponent for Alvarez when it was clear that they were competing with the HBO televised fight card put together by the rival promotional company Top Rank on the same night. That card has Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. facing Sergio Martinez. If you compare that fight with the Canelo-Lopez bout, which will be televised on Showtime, there’s no comparison. The Chavez Jr-Martinez fight is a competitive fight, whereas the Alvarez vs. Lopez bout figures to be a terrible mismatch.
Hopefully, Golden boy finally decides to start matching Alvarez against quality opposition in his own division after he wipes out Lopez, because it’s high time they do. It’s just wrong to have a champion that isn’t matched against the best fighters in the division.
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