By Dan Ambrose: The World Boxing Council reportedly won’t be allowing their WBC junior middleweight title holder Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to keep both his WBC and his newly won WBA title. Canelo will have to make a decision which strap he wants to keep. He’s planning on taking a trip to pick up the WBA title in Panama on Tuesday.
Unless he gives up the WBA title like the WBC wants him to, his reign as the WBA 154 lb. champion could be a short one with him having to give it up immediately if he wants to keep his WBC strap.
Canelo has a good relationship with WBC president Jose Sulaiman and he and his team will be speaking with him to see if he’ll make an exception with him so that he can keep both titles. Canelo wants to collect all the junior middleweight titles one by one, but if the WBC keeps him from holding their titles in addition to other straps, it’s going to foil Canelo’s plans.
It’s unclear why the WBC doesn’t allow their champions to hold more than one title at a title. It could be that having a champion with multiple titles in their possession results in the sanctioning fee to the WBC being less. By having their champions holding only one title, the WBC strap, it’s possible that ensures that the sanctioning fee doesn’t decrease.
Having as many titles as possible would help Canelo gain more credibility with boxing fans as the top guy at 154, even though the division is a weak one and Canelo hasn’t fought his mandatory challenger for two years for his WBC title. The other champions in the division are Ishe Smith, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Zaurbek Baysangurov.
For some reason the World Boxing Association hasn’t stripped Mayweather of his 154 lb. title even though he hasn’t defended since capturing it last year in May in beating Miguel Cotto.
The WBC also seemed to give Mayweather favorable treatment by not stripping him of his WBC welterweight title even though he hadn’t defended it for a year and half before facing Robert Guerrero this month.
The WBC recently stripped WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward of his title after only four months after he was injured, yet Mayweather held his 147 WBC title for a year and a half before he finally defended it.
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