By Dan Ambrose: Oscar de La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions is dropping a pretty big hint that he thinks he can set up a huge mega fight between his fighter WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) and unbeaten WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (43-0, 26 KO’s) on either May 4th or September 14th.
Mayweather Jr. scheduled himself to fight on both of those days, and then Golden Boy did the same with Alvarez, no doubt hoping they can somehow convince Mayweather Jr. to fight their guy Canelo. I don’t know if they’ll succeed but it looks Golden Boy are trying their hardest to make that happen. I can’t think of a more undeserving fighter to get a Mayweather fight than Canelo Alvarez. The guy hasn’t fought Austin Trout or anyone else of quality, he’s fight welterweight despite being the junior middleweight champion, and yet he wants Mayweather.
De La Hoya told Ringtv.com “Those two dates: May 4th and September 14, I’m actually looking forward to one of those dates to break my all-time pay per view record [of 2.4 million buys done with Mayweather Jr. in 2007]. Those two dates, you’re going to see a blockbuster. Blockbuster, and that’s all you need to know.”
I don’t believe it. Mayweather isn’t going to fight Canelo on May 4th, because Robert Guerrero is going to be the guy he faces, so De La Hoya shouldn’t play games as if he can make the Mayweather-Alvarez fight. It’s not going to happen. And if Canelo doesn’t fight WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout on May 4th, De La Hoya is going to hurt Canelo’s standing with a lot of boxing fans because it’ll look like they’re keeping Canelo away from Trout.
The Trout vs. Miguel Cotto fight was supposed to be a set up where Alvarez faced the winner of the fight, but when Trout dominated Cotto by out-boxing him, all of a sudden Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions started dragging his feet at the idea of putting Alvarez in with Trout. What makes it look especially bad is that Golden Boy has matched Canelo with pretty much nothing welterweights since he picked up the WBC 154 pound title.
Canelo hasn’t faced anyone that you can call a good junior middleweight since he won the title against welterweight Mathew Hatton in 2011. Canelo has faced one junior middleweight Ryan Rhodes with the rest being welterweights or light welterweights.
If De La Hoya can put together a fight between Mayweather and Canelo in September, I still don’t see that fight breaking pay per view records. Canelo isn’t even close to being as well-known as De la Hoya was when he faced Mayweather.
Canelo has only been fighting on U.S television for the past two years and it’s always been undercard fights against weak opposition for the most part, like 40-year-old over the hill Shane Mosley, light welterweight Josesito Lopez, welterweight Matthew Hatton, welterweight Alfonso Gomez, and welterweight Kermit Cintron. Those have all been mismatches with Alvarez facing smaller guys on undercards. Canelo is a star in Mexico, but not in the United States yet. For that to happen Golden Boy is going to need to take off the training wheels and put him in with Trout. Will they do that? Probably not. Trout is too good and Alvarez is too flat footed, and easy to hit.
Canelo isn’t a huge star in the U.S yet, because his opposition has been poor and he’s fighting on undercards. A Mayweather-Canelo fight would likely draw around 1.4, possibly 1.5 million buys at the most. It could be a much bigger fight but Golden Boy hasn’t built up Canelo the right way by putting him in against good opposition.
Comments are closed.