12K tickets sold for Canelo vs. Trout on 1st day

By Boxing News - 03/15/2013 - Comments

McAllen_0U9C3732_send(Photos: Stephanie Trapp/SHOWTIME) By Dan Ambrose: Over 12 thousand tickets were sold on the first day after being put on sale for the April 20th unification clash between WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) and WBA champion Austin Trout (26-0, 14 KO’s).

Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer told ESPN the 12 thousand tickets have been sold for the fight that will take place for the 72,000 seat stadium at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, but the stadium has been scaled back to hold only 30,000. In other words, Golden Boy and Canelo are making the tickets extra cheap just to sell out less than half of the stadium.

So what does that tell you about Canelo’s popularity if Golden Boy is dropping the prices at a bargain basement price for the fight? I don’t know, but I think it gives a good indication that Canelo isn’t popular enough at this time to draw huge amounts of boxing fans if the fight were to take place with regular priced tickets.

Golden Boy should have just put the fight in Mexico City, Mexico. They have a new 100,000 seat stadium over there, and it makes a lot more sense for Schaefer to be trying to sell tickets where Canelo has a huge fan base. That way the tickets don’t have to be reduced in value just to get people to come see the fight. I don’t think Canelo would come close to selling out a huge stadium like that, but he’d definitely draw more boxing fans than by putting it on the border of Mexico in Texas.

At this point Canelo still hasn’t accomplished much in his career aside from beating a handful of undersized welterweights and a number of older fighters. We’re going to learn a great deal about him on April 20th because he won’t be fighting a smaller guy and he won’t be fighting a fighter that’s over-the-hill like a number of Canelo’s past opponents have been. All this talk of Canelo insisting that he get a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. will be a moot point if he can’t get past Trout or if he’s given a hometown decision in Texas.



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