By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) announced his next three fight dates for 2014, and every one of them are on pay-per-view. The 23-year-old Canelo had his first headlining fight on PPV last September in his mega-fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. on Showtime in Las Vegas, and now Canelo figures that he’s popular enough for all of his fights to be on PPV.
On his twitter, Canelo announced the following dates for his next three fights: March 8th, July 26th and November 22nd.
“After my meeting with GBP these are the dates that will fight in 2014: March 8, 26 in July and 22 November. My three dates will be on PPV and the first opponent of March 8 will be announced in the coming weeks!”
Miguel Cotto and Sergio Martinez’s names have been mentioned as potential opponents for Canelo. Cotto’s name was mentioned as a possibility for his March fight. The only problem would be to somehow make a deal with Top Rank, the promoters for Cotto. Canelo is promoted by Golden Boy Promotions and it might prove difficult to set up a fight between the two fighters given that the two promotional teams rarely work with one another nowadays.
If Canelo decides to fight a welterweight for his next fight in March then you can count on it being Victor Ortiz. He was supposed to fight Canelo in the past but he was beaten by Josesito Lopez and suffered a broken jaw in that fight. Ortiz has a fan base and an Ortiz-Canelo fight might attract a little bit of interest on PPV. It won’t be a lot because Ortiz has been out of it for ages and he was already exposed by Marcos Maidana, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Josesito Lopez.
There’s not much for Canelo at 154 in the way of interesting fights. The best fighters in the junior middleweight division – Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout, Carlos Molina, Demetrius Andrade and Vanes Martirosyan – lack large fan bases. A fight between Canelo and any of those guys would be a tough sell on PPV. Canelo seems reluctant to move up to 160 for some reason despite the fact that he’s got the size to fight at that weight class, and there’s more interesting opponents in that division. It’s likely that Canelo will continue to hang around at 154 and face welterweights for the most part due to that division having more notable opponents than at 154.