Canelo: I’ll fight Trout on May 4th if Mayweather will fight me in September

By Boxing News - 01/25/2013 - Comments

canelo1By Dan Ambrose: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) is poised to agree to fight on the Floyd Mayweather Jr. HBO pay per view undercard on May 4th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, provided Mayweather agrees to fight him in September.

Canelo told the record.com.mx “If you do not sign to face me in September, I promise not to fight on May 4th…I do not need to be co-feature for Floyd Mayweather, but we must do our part…It’s almost certainly going to be against him [Trout on May 4th]. I’m just waiting to confirm that we have signed two [Mayweather and Trout.”

So unless Mayweather Jr. agrees to fight Canelo in September then he won’t agree to fight Trout. I’m sure Mayweather doesn’t really care about this condition because it looks like he already wanted to fight Canelo in September anyway. Canelo hardly needed to use this bargaining tool, considering Mayweather already tipped his hand well ahead of time about who he wants to fight in September when he chose September 14th [the Mexican Independence day] as the date for his fight.

Mayweather is already fighting one Mexican – Robert Guerrero – on May 4th, and there are no other really popular Mexican fighters at 147 or 154 other than Caneleo. It’s pretty obvious that Mayweather was going to fight Canelo anyway.

I don’t know if Mayweather is going to like Canelo playing this conditional game with him because it almost makes it seem like Canelo is putting himself on the same level as Mayweather despite the fact that Canelo is TOTALLY unproven during his career. If you compare Canelo’s career with Mayweather, it’s like night and day. Mayweather has fought the best in every division he’s competed in. Canelo has fought a lot of older and smaller fighters.

Canelo even won his WBC 154 pound title by beating a fringe welterweight contender in Matthew Hatton. I don’t know why the World Boxing Council let Hatton skip over all the top contenders like Erislandy Lara and Vanes Martirosyan for Canelo to fight for the vacant WBC title in 2011 because Hatton wasn’t even ranked in the 154 pound division at the time. He was a welterweight. All those title defenses Canelo has made against welterweights like Kermit Cintron, Alfonso Gomez, Josesito Lopez and Shane Mosley.

Canelo’s career accomplishments are so far below Mayweather that it’s almost laughable that he’s trying to bargain his way into a fight with him September by making his appearance on his May 4th card a conditional one. If I was Mayweather I’d say forget it just for general purposes. I’m sure he wanted to fight him but I think this might be a little off putting for Mayweather to have Canelo trying to needlessly get himself a guarantee for a fight with him in September.

If Canelo does fight Trout, I think it’s going to go really bad for Canelo with him losing that fight or possibly getting a gift decision like the one Oscar De La Hoya got against Felix Sturm just before De La Hoya’s fight with Bernard Hopkins.



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