Bernstein: Mayweather and Canelo Alvarez will likely fight in September

By Boxing News - 01/13/2013 - Comments

alvarez324By Dan Ambrose: Al Bernstein of Showtime believes that a fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will be taking place on September 14th this year after two of them share the May 4th pay per view card on HBO from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Speaking with the Boxing Chanel, Bernstein said “Mayweather and Alvarez will fight probably in September this year. They both fight on May 4th, Mayweather against likely Robert Guerrero, and Saul Alvarez against possibly Austin Trout or maybe Miguel Cotto. Both have to win.”

Bernstein thinks an Alvarez vs. Mayweather fight will be good for boxing because of the huge popularity of Mayweather Jr. and the growing popularity of Alvarez in the United States.

It remains to be seen, however, whether Canelo will fight on the Mayweather Jr. card because right now they’re still negotiating that. As for Canelo facing Trout, that doesn’t seem likely to happen, as Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer has expressed doubts about whether he’ll make that fight, and Trout recently said last Friday that he still hasn’t even been contacted about the fight.

Given that we’re fast approaching February, it’s not a good sign that Trout is saying he hasn’t been spoken to by Golden Boy about this fight. That suggests that Golden Boy will be looking to go in another direction for an opponent for Canelo.

A Mayweather-Canelo fight would be a big pay per view fight but probably not as big as what Oscar De La Hoya and Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy think it’ll be. De La Hoya thinks it’ll break his pay per view mark of 2.4 million buys, but that’s not realistic because De La Hoya made that record with Mayweather, and both of those fighters have fought in the United States their entire careers.

They’re not like Canelo, who only started having his fights televised in the U.S since 2011. How can Golden Boy expect to have a record breaking PPV when one of the fighters, Canelo, has only been televised for a couple of years, against smaller, older and lesser fighters for the most part? It’s not going to break any records.

The odds of Mayweather coming back after only four months after his fight on May 4th to fight Canelo on September 14th is hard to imagine because Mayweather is fighting once a year now. He tends to get a big payday and then disappear for a year afterwards. Can he come back in four months? Yes, but I doubt he will because it goes against his recent track record.



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