Canelo Alvarez to get $2 million, Josesito Lopez $212,500 for their fight on Saturday

By Boxing News - 09/11/2012 - Comments

Image: Canelo Alvarez to get $2 million, Josesito Lopez $212,500 for their fight on SaturdayBy Dan Ambrose: The young 22-year-old WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) is going to be getting a huge payday of $2 million by his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions for his title defense against welterweight Josesito Lopez (30-4, 18 KO’s) on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Lopez, 28, will be receiving $212,500 for the fight, according to Steve Kim. Both Alvarez and Lopez are getting very good pay given that this isn’t even a pay per view fight on Showtime. That’s extremely good money when you consider that Alvarez’s fights have only recently been televised in the United States. Last year I believe was when Alvarez started having his fights shown in the U.S, and he’s still not faced anyone even halfway good. There hasn’t been one exciting fight where Alvarez was matched against a competitive opponent, and I don’t see that changing on Saturday night against welterweight Lopez.

To be sure, Lopez now has #4 ranking at 154 courtesy of the World Boxing Council, but that’s a ranking that the WBC just recently gave Lopez after the fight with Alvarez was signed. It looks almost like it was for show to give Alvarez and Golden Boy cover from the criticism that they would take for matching Alvarez up against a fighter that only in his last fight moved up from light welterweight to welterweight.

Alvarez has almost every advantage that you could imagine over Lopez going into their fight this Saturday. Lopez fans like to say that he’ll do well against Alvarez because he did well against Ortiz. I don’t see it that way. It’s apples and oranges. Just because Lopez fought effectively against Ortiz, who was sporting a broken jaw, doesn’t mean that Lopez will be able to compete with Alvarez. I think Lopez is going to lose virtually every exchange with Alvarez on Saturday, and end up getting one or both eyes completely shut well before the 8th. The ringside doctor is going to have to halt this fight because of the swelling of Lopez’s eyes. That’s my prediction. He doesn’t have the power or the natural size to compete with Alvarez.

I got to hand it to Golden Boy for their matchmaking in finding Lopez from welterweight to match with Alvarez. I think they pretty much have to do this because if Golden Boy puts Alvarez in with someone good from his own division, like Erislandy Lara, Alvarez will likely lose. As long as Golden Boy keeps matching Alvarez carefully, and the WBC not blocking the match-ups, I see Alvarez winning for a long time.



Comments are closed.