De La Hoya: Canelo has Cotto and Mayweather as options for his next fight in September

By Boxing News - 04/22/2013 - Comments

IMG_2483(Photo credit: Sumio Yamada) By Allan Fox: Oscar De La Hoya, the promoter for WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s), says that Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather Jr. are the two leading candidates for Canelo’s next fight in September.

De Hoya and Golden Boy are waiting for the outcome of Mayweather’s fight next month against Robert Guerrero before they make a move to set up an opponent for Canelo in September.

De La Hoya said to elnuevodia.com “They are both options [Cotto and Mayweather], but Canelo Alvarez has said he wants to fight the best and the best currently is Floyd Mayweather. Then we have to see what will happen on May 4 because it is not guaranteed to win. Guerrero is complicated. If there is a day where you can lose your undefeated record, Floyd will be on May 4.”

Canelo wants the Mayweather fight most of all, but that’s going to be a very difficult fight for Golden Boy to land for him. Mayweather won’t likely be agreeable to giving Canelo more than $3 million to $5 million for the fight if that, and Canelo obviously would be expecting a much bigger payday than that if he were to fight Mayweather.

De La Hoya doesn’t pull the strings for Mayweather. He can suggest the fight to Mayweather but that’s about all he can do without his control. It’s more likely that De La Hoya will get Cotto for Canelo’s next fight, although that’s still a difficult fight as well because Cotto has lost his last two fights and he may not eager to take the fight against Canelo unless he’s paid really well. Cotto made a lot of money in his loss to Mayweather.

This isn’t exactly a great time for Golden Boy to be setting Canelo up with Cotto right now with him having lost his last two fights. The boxing public doesn’t see that as an appealing fight given Cotto’s lack of success recently. It might be better for Golden Boy to wait until Cotto gets a couple of wins under his belt before they look to match Canelo up against him because right now it would be perceived as another fight where Canelo is matched up with a faded old timer.

Getting Mayweather to agree to fight Canelo would likely require for Canelo to agree to fight Mayweather at 147 and to agree to a rehydration limit. Mayweather wouldn’t agree to fight Canelo knowing that he’d balloon up to light heavyweight [175] after making weight and have a near 30 pound weight advantage over him. That wouldn’t work.



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