By Robert Elmore: When Floyd Mayweather took on Oscar De La Hoya in 2007, Floyd had to concede everything in order to make the mega fight happen. The weight, gloves, ring size, and purse where all stacked in the Golden Boy’s favor. Mayweather didn’t complain one bit. He understood that in order to crossover and become pay per view king, he would have to put his pride aside to end up where he is today.
I would dare to say, Floyd was looking at years down the road, rather just right then. The gamble paid off. The fight became the highest grossing fight in boxing history in pay per view buys and in total revenue. Mayweather has gone on to break records and collect huge pay days since that time. But Oscar was the key to his success.
Before that, Floyd’s highest pay per view was 375,000 buys against Zab Judah. Now he has everyone from 140 to 160 pounds calling him out for a big pay day; especially Saul Canelo Alvarez. While I have no problem with him doing this, the way he went about it was all wrong.
It started when the undercard of the Mayweather-Guerrero fight were being figured out. The unproven Alvarez gave Mayweather an ultimatum; Sign the contract to fight me in September of 2013 or I will no longer fight on your under card. So literally what Alvarez was saying was “I can be superstar without you”.
Then after he beat Austin Trout, he stated he wanted to fight the pay per view king. He will even be in attendance at Floyd’s fight in May of this year. But what Canelo is going to quickly going to find out is that Floyd doesn’t need him. Disrespecting Mayweather the way Canelo did and then turning around and asking for a fight is like a teenager telling his parent’s “I’m tired of your rules. I’m moving out”. But then turns around and ask for a few bucks to help finance his move. Canelo wanted to be a grown up so he must play grown up games.
The beautiful part about Saul Alvarez is that he has a huge Mexican following. Now all he needs is about 2/3rds of the American following and the rest will fall into place. The ugly part is, he may need to move up to the middleweight division to get huge pay days. Unless he just wants to stay at 154 and clean out the division which is another option. But outside of Miguel Cotto, who in the 154 pound division is a draw both crowd and financially? These fighters are HBO or Showtime fighters at best.
Would Floyd be a jerk to dictate the ring size, gloves, put a rehydration clause in the contract, and weight to Canelo, even if that meant the fight happening at 147? In hindsight he wouldn’t be because it’s Canelo who wants the fight. The media and fans alike would have a field day if that did happen. But understand, it’s Canelo that needs Mayweather not the other way around. And with Floyd’s new deal with Showtime, I don’t really think he is impressed at all by Alvarez’s ultimatum.
However, Floyd might have entertained the idea had Canelo said something along the lines of “I would like to thank Floyd for the opportunity to fight on his undercard, but now it’s time to move in another direction”. That would have been suitable and more professional. It will be very interesting to see what Golden Boy does with Alvarez should the suggested fight of Miguel Cotto falls through. Canelo made his bed and now he must lie in it.
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