By Dan Ambrose: This Saturday’s fight between Erislany Lara and Vanes Martirosyan is supposed to be a WBC junior middleweight eliminator bout with the winner becoming the mandatory challenger for WBC 154 lb champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. However, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen according to some of the comments from Alvarez’s promoter Richard Schaefer at Golden Boy Promotions.
Schaefer says that Alvarez only wants the big fights and wants to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr, Miguel Cotto or Sergio Martinez next. According to the wbcboxing.com website, the WBC president Jose Sulaiman says that Alvarez has to fight the Lara-Martirosyan winner next and not one of the three names that Alvarez wants to fight in his next bout in May.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Alvarez and Golden Boy Promotions are going to go along with the program because they don’t seem interested in Alvarez fighting either Lara or Martirosyan next despite their fight being an eliminator bout. Usually, when champions hold titles they have to defend against mandatory contenders. They can’t just fight whoever they want to fight. That kind of makes a mockery of the whole idea behind a champion if they can pick and choose the guys that they want to fight instead of the fighters that the sanctioning bodies pick out after setting up eliminator bouts like the Lara vs. Martirosyan fight on Saturday.
Schaefer said this as quoted by Latimes.com writer Lance Pugmire: “What do think Canelo thinks of this? [the WBC president saying that Alvarez has to fight the Martirorsyan vs. Lara winner next]. If you have a chance to fight the best fighter in the world in Floyd Mayweather., and you get that opportunity, doesn’t that take priority?”
I think Schaefer is probably kidding himself if he thinks that Alvarez is going to get a fight against Mayweather next in May. That’s not realistic, and I can’t even imagine what Schaefer even floated that idea. He might as well be talking about Alvarez winning the lottery because he’s not going to get the Mayweather fight. But it does look like Alvarez could vacate this World Boxing Council title if the WBC tries to force him to fight one of the top guys that they have ranked. I don’t see why Alvarez doesn’t do it because the chances are high he’s not going to get a fight against Sergio Martinez in May because Martinez is fighting in Argentina while he waits for a rematch against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Alvarez won’t likely get a fight against Miguel Cotto, because the chances are high that Cotto loses to Austin Trout on December 1st. Sure, Alvarez can fight Trout but that’s a fight that’s no bigger than Alvarez fighting Martirosyan or Lara. He might as well fight one of those guys if Trout ends up taking Cotto out of play.
What boxing fans don’t like about Alvarez is the way he got the WBC title in the first place by beating a welterweight in Matthew Hatton instead of a junior middleweight. Fans didn’t like that. They also haven’t liked the match-making that Golden Boy has done for Alvarez since he picked up the belt. Alvarez has defended his title against a 40-year-old over the hill Shane Mosley, a light welterweight Josesito Lopez, a welterweight Alfonso Gomez, a struggling Kermit Cintron and an older Ryan Rhodes. That’s 2 welterweights, 1 light light welterweight and three older fighters past their prime.
Recently there was talk that the 22-year-old Alvarez would defend his title in December, but instead he said he’s not fighting in December and wants to sit around and wait 8 months until May 5th the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, and he only wants to fight the big names Martinez, Cotto and Mayweather.
A lot of boxing fans think Alvarez hasn’t paid his dues yet and that he doesn’t deserve to fight one of those guys yet because of the soft matchmaking done for him in the last two years. It’s difficult to imagine Alvarez, who is still only 22, choosing to take nearly a year off from boxing just to sit around and wait for a big fight instead of doing what he’s required to do in order to keep his WBC title. He may not get the big fight that he’s asking for and does he really deserve it at this point with the matchmaking he’s had?
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