Smith: Canelo rules out fighting Mayweather at a catchweight

By Boxing News - 05/22/2013 - Comments

canelo5434By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez has reportedly said no to the idea of him fighting WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. at a catchweight of 150-151, according to Stephen A. Smith of ESPN. Canelo only wants the fight at 154, so if Mayweather wants to fight him, he’ll have to come up to Canelo’s weight class to make the fight happen.

Smith said to ESPN “Canelo is a big boy and he’s a bigger boy. He’s a big dude…he walks around bigger. Canelo is on record saying he won’t do the catchweight…but if he wants to make big money, he’s going to have to shave off three pounds and not fight at 154. Canelo is really a junior middleweight that an fight as a middleweight.”

I think Smith has got it wrong. Canelo is really a middleweight who can fight as a junior middleweight. Canelo weighed 172 for his last fight against Austin Trout last month, and that’s a middleweight after he’s rehydrated. I don’t know of too many junior middleweights who rehydrate to 172 lbs.

The fact that Canelo is able to do this still is probably because of his youth. When a fighter is young, he can do that kind of thing without it hurting him. However, I can’t see Canelo dehydrating down to 154 for too much longer because losing 18 pounds of water weight is really hard on your body and it causes a fighter to be weak and tired. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why Canelo starts to gas after five rounds. He’s draining down too much to fight in a weight class that his body can no longer support.

Smith wants Mayweather to wait until his 5th fight of his six-fight contract with Showtime/CBS before he fights Canelo just in case something goes wrong.

Mayweather would be wasting his time by offering to fight Canelo at a catch weight of 151, because he should be standing firm on telling the 22-year-old, red-haired Canelo that the fight needs to take place at 147 or not at all.

That should be the starting point. If Canelo’s team says no to that, then that’s good for them. They can try and build Canelo into a big star by matching him against the other fighters in boxing, but it’s going to take a long, long time before Canelo becomes a huge star that way and I don’t think he ever will if all Golden Boy is going to do is match him against welterweights 25 pounds lighter than him.



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