By Dan Ambrose: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo”Alvarez said yesterday that he’ll most likely be facing WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout on the undercard of Floyd Mayweather Jr’s next fight on May 4th in Las Vegas, as long as Mayweather signs a contract to face him in September.
The Canelo-Trout fight is a potential nightmare for Golden Boy Promotions, Canelo’s promoters, because Trout is a highly skilled fighter who specializes in making his opponents miss and then hitting them with counter shots. Canelo could lose this fight and put Golden Boy Promotions in the situation where a beaten Canelo would then be fighting Mayweather in September.
You have to figure that any contract that Canelo signs for a fight against Mayweather would be one where Canelo will still get a fight against him even if Canelo loses to Trout. The goal seems to be a Mayweather fight regardless of the circumstances of what happens against Trout, and that could make Golden Boy look silly if their man Canelo gets beaten by Trout.
The difference between an unbeaten Canelo facing Mayweather and Canelo coming off an embarrassing loss to Trout would be a huge. I’m sure a Canelo-Mayweather fight would still do well on PPV under those circumstances but not nearly as well as an unbeaten Canelo.
This is why I have a feeling we may see a highly controversial win for Canelo over Trout on May 4th, if this fight gets made. This kind of stuff seems to happen historically in boxing where a fighter who is on the verge of a huge money fight that would pump up the sport and help Las Vegas, ends up winning a controversial decision just before a big fight.
For Canelo to actually beat Trout without controversy, he’d have to show much more than he has in his game in his pass fights. Canelo has looked like a smaller version of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fighting opponents much smaller than him that he’s been able to blast apart at close range. Canelo is mostly an inside fighter, who fights flat-footed, and seems to tire by the 6th round when his smaller opponents don’t keel over.
Canelo wouldn’t be able to count on Trout just standing in one place so that Canelo could pound away at him on the inside. Canelo would to be able to move around the ring and throw longer punches for him to win this fight because Trout would make sure that Canelo couldn’t get in punching range in this fight.
Trout has the much better flexibility and ring movement compared to the flat-footed Canelo, and he moves much better as well. When Canelo is forced to move around the ring, he tends to turn red-faced and tire. Trout would be all over Canelo in this fight and might just give him a boxing lesson.
Golden Boy will look really bad if Canelo loses to Trout, and then Golden Boy tries to sell a Canelo vs. Mayweather fight in September rather than a Trout vs. Mayweather fight.
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