Mayweather-Canelo 12-city tour in works starting on June 24th in New York

By Boxing News - 06/07/2013 - Comments

mayweather22235By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schafer has decided to take out the stops completely in marketing the September 14th mega fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) and the popular Mexican fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s).

Schaefer will be having Mayweather and Canelo participating in a 12-city tour around the United States starting on June 24th in New York, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. This is a much bigger tour than the usual three-city tour that mega fights tend to him, but it’s also a much bigger fight because Mayweather is involved.

Golden Boy is going to have to introduce the 22-year-old Canelo to U.S boxing fans because a lot of the casual fans have never seen the red-haired Mexican before.

Canelo is popular with hardcore boxing fans in the U.S, but for the casual fans they don’t have a clue who he is yet. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons that Schaefer is going to have Mayweather-Canelo hit 12 cities instead of 3 to 5.

To get a lot of fans interested in this fight they’re going to have to let them know who Canelo is.

I think the Mayweather vs. Canelo fight will do well, but people are kidding themselves if they think that it’ll break pay per view record set by Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya back in 2006 with 2.4 million buys.

It won’t break that record because Canelo isn’t a star like De La Hoya in the U.S, and Mayweather can’t do it himself. I think the fight will do well, but more in the range of 1.5 million buys at best. It’ll be around number of buys as the Mayweather vs. Miguel Cotto card last year in May. That card had Canelo on the undercard as the co-feature in a mismatch against 41-year-old past his best Shane Mosley in a fight that should have arguably never been put together in the first place.

The good thing about this fight, at least for Golden Boy Promotions, is that Canelo will be a well known fighter after it’s over and it’ll be a lot easier for them to try and sell him in future PPV fights headlined by him against other opposition. The one thing that could hurt Canelo and Golden Boy is if Mayweather does a job on Canelo like he did against an equally young Victor Ortiz two years ago. That fight was supposed to have been a competitive bout but it turned out to be a huge mismatch with Mayweather dominating Ortiz and stopping him in the 4th round. I like Ortiz’s skills – hand speed, foot movement and boxing ability – a lot more than I do Canelo, and look what Mayweather did to Ortiz. It was a total mismatch even with Ortiz coming into the fight in the mid-160s.

Canelo is more like a flat-footed slightly smaller version of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. with tendency to fight a lot on the inside with body punching, his inability to fight on the move, and him being much heavier than the welterweight opposition that Golden Boy matches him up against.



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