Canelo threatening to pull out of May 4th fight unless Mayweather agrees to fight him on September 14th

By Boxing News - 02/26/2013 - Comments

canelo42By Dan Ambrose: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) is reportedly threatening to pull out of the May 4th undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero fight unless Mayweather agrees to fight him on September 14th, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.

There are whispers that Mayweather is thinking of facing IBF welterweight champion Devon Alexander this September instead of Canelo, and it looks Canelo wants a guarantee that he’s going to get the Mayweather fight before he’ll agree to help make Floyd’s May 4th pay-per-view fight on Showtime/CBS a bigger fight in terms of money.

This is a risky thing for Canelo to do because what he may not realize is Mayweather doesn’t need him to make the May 4th fight date a successful one. To be sure, it’ll help in a big way to have Canelo on the undercard, but not if it means he’s going to be trying to twist Mayweather’s arm into fighting him when and he wants instead of when Mayweather wants.

That’s a youthful mistake on Canelo’s part because what he doesn’t realize is that Mayweather has an ace in the hole with his good friend WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner, who is waiting in the wings to get the call to fight on the undercard.

If Canelo tries to force his hand, then Mayweather will simply substitute out Canelo with Broner and the fight will still be hugely successful. It’ll be like having two Mayweather’s on the same card, and it will do really well with boxing fans, especially with Showtime’s All Access showing both Broner and Mayweather in a series of episodes.

If Canelo plays hardball then he might find himself fighting on another date, and not getting Mayweather in September anyway. His pay per view won’t do the numbers that Mayweather’s will, and he’ll have missed out on a big chance to be seen by millions of casual American boxing fans.

If Golden Boy continues with their soft match-making for Canelo, then we’ll likely see him matched against someone beatable that won’t tell us anything about Canelo other than the fact that he can beat the easy opposition Golden Boy is picking out for him.



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