Ricardo Mayorga: I’ll be signing contract to fight Canelo Alvarez on Tuesday

By Boxing News - 07/07/2012 - Comments

Image: Ricardo Mayorga: I'll be signing contract to fight Canelo Alvarez on TuesdayBy Dan Ambrose: Soon to be 39-year-old former two division world champion Ricardo Mayorga (29-8-1, 23 KO’s) says he’ll be traveling to the United States to sign a contract to fight WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) next Tuesday for a fight that will take place on September 15th, according to Univision.

Mayorga, who hasn’t fought in over a year since being stopped in the 12th round by WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto last March, said to Univision “I’d love to win in five rounds. I will knockout Canelo.”

Mayorga wants to capture Alvarez’s World Boxing Council title and “Present” it to president Daniel Ortega.

For a lot of boxing fans it will be kind of a shock to discover that Mayorga has been picked out to fight Alvarez by Golden Boy Promotions instead of guys like Austin Trout, Cornelius Bundrage, Erislandy Lara, Vanes Martirosyan and James Kirkland. After all, those fighters are either champions or ranked high in the junior middleweight division. Mayorga is ranked at all, and you’d have to wonder how the World Boxing Council would sanction a fight between Alvarez and a fighter not ranked in the top 15 by any of the boxing sanctioning bodies. The WBC already said no to the idea of Alvarez facing Trout, so why would they allow Golden Boy to hand pick Mayorga for Alvarez?

From Golden Boy’s perspective, a mismatch between Canelo Alvarez and Mayorga isn’t surprising. Look at who they’ve been matching Alvarez up against: 40-year-old Shane Mosley, 40-year-old Lovemore N’dou, 40-year-old Carlos Baldomir, Jose Miguel Cotto, Matthew Hatton, Alfonso Gomez, Ryan Rhodes, and Kermit Cintron. That’s pretty soft opposition. They put Alvarez in with Hatton, a welterweight, when he fought for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title. What does that tell you?

A fight between Alvarez and Mayorga will be strictly aimed at the casual boxing fans who don’t have a clue that Mayorga is 10 years past his prime, hasn’t fought in the last 16 months, and hasn’t won a fight in two years. It’s been seven years since Mayorga beat a top contender in Michele Piccirillo. Mayorga has a recognizable name among casual boxing fans of the sport, and he’s well known in the Latin American countries, which will probably love this fight. Being that Alvarez lives in Mexico, it will be a popular choice.

But best of all, Mayorga is no threat to beating Alvarez, and he’s good at marketing a fight due to his trash talk and over the top behavior during press conferences. Golden Boy probably can’t put Alvarez in with certain fighters like Lara, because he’d probably get beaten. Once Lara, 29, starts to age then it’ll be safe to put him in with Alvarez, but for now he’s too young and too much of a threat still.



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