(Photo: Golden Boy Promotions, Ramiro Gonzalez, German Villasenor) By Dan Ambrose: It’s more than a little off putting to see how WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) is being allowed by the World Boxing Council to face a fighter that’s not even ranked in the top 15 in the 154 pound division in Josesito Lopez (30-4, 18 KO’s) on September 15th rather than an actual contender that’s worked hard to try and get a title shot.
The WBC is really doing a disservice to all the top 15 ranked contenders that they have ranked in their top 15 by allowing Lopez, a light welterweight, to skip two divisions and take a title fight against the 22-year-old Alvarez. Lopez can probably hang tough enough to take a beating and get knocked out in the same way that many of the top 15 junior middleweight contenders would be if they were to fight Alvarez, but the difference here is that Lopez isn’t ranked by the WBC in the junior middleweight division and he shouldn’t be able to skip over more well deserving contenders to get that shot.
The sanctioning bodies like the WBC are supposed to be there to guard against this kind of stuff, because it makes boxing like some kind of professional wrestling in my view. If you’re one of the top 15 contenders in the junior middleweight division and you’ve been working hard and waiting to get a shot at the WBC title, it’s got to really hurt to see 140 pound contender being allowed to skip over you for a title shot.
The thing with Alvarez is that his whole title reign has been done in a way that seems like he’s been given an easy ride by his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions and the WBC said anything about. Alvarez won the WBC 154 pound title against a welterweight when he defeated Matthew Hatton last year for the vacant WBC belt. Why the World Boxing Council allowed a welterweight to fight for the vacant belt is beyond me. They might as have given the WBC title to Alvarez, because by matching him against a welterweight without any power in Hatton, it came out to be the same thing.
That shouldn’t have been allowed to happen, and now Alvarez is being allowed to go one step further by facing a light welterweight instead of junior middleweight. Can you imagine heavyweight Wladimir Klitschko being allowed to fight a light heavyweight instead of a heavyweight? Combing the light welterweight division for opponents to face Alvarez is just wrong. If Alvarez can’t fight the top junior middleweights like Erislandy Lara then he needs to give back the belt to the WBC and continue fighting welterweights like Hatton and light welterweights like Josesito Lopez, and no one complain about it.
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