Canelo with a lot to lose if Angulo beats him on March 8th

By Boxing News - 02/07/2014 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions and former WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) have a lot to lose with Canelo facing the dangerous puncher Alfredo Angulo (22-3, 18 KO’s) next month on March 8th in Canelo’s first pay-per-view fight of his own with him being the A side at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Angulo, who is coming off of a knockout loss to Erislandy Lara in his last fight, has been chosen because presumably he has a come forward style that is made to order for the red-haired Canelo, but there’s still a lot of unknowns about whether that’s actually true. Angulo might be too much for the flat-footed, 170+ pound Canelo to handle next month, which in that case would be very bad news for Golden Boy Promotions and Canelo.

Golden Boy is counting on the soon to be 24-year-old Canelo to be their next big money pay-per-view star that will be able to bring in big money for many years to come on PPV. Canelo could be the closest thing that Golden Boy has to another Floyd Mayweather Jr. in terms of the money that Canelo can bring in with his PPV fights.

You have to see Canelo as a golden goose for Golden Boy with the potential to lay a lot of golden eggs for them if he can get winning again, and not get exposed a second time like he was in his last bout by Mayweather last September. That’s why Canelo can’t afford to get beaten by Angulo on March 8th, because a loss for Canelo will make it impossible for Golden Boy to ask boxing fans to pay to see his future fights, unless they want to be stubborn about it and make boxing fans pay to see the 23-year-old fight even with him losing over and over again.

I wouldn’t recommend that. That would be a sure fire way of turning off fans, and preventing Canelo from being a big star. As it is, Canelo is prematurely rushing into becoming a PPV fighter because he still hasn’t really established himself as a huge star in his own right. His last fight with Mayweather brought in big numbers, but that was Mayweather, not Canelo. There are a lot of casual fans who still have no clue who the red-haired fighter is due to him having only been televised on Showtime for a short period of time.

Canelo really needed at least 2 more years of having his fights televised on regular Showtime before having fights become PPV bouts. You didn’t see Oscar De La Hoya and Mayweather Jr. rushing into asking their fans to pay to see their fights. They realized it was smarter to have more fans see them on regular cable before they finally asked their fans to pay to see them fight. With Canelo, he’s done it backwards by rushing to have his fights be PPV without having been seen by a lot of the casual boxing fans.

Canelo has never beaten a good fighter that had excellent power before in his career. All the plodder type fighters that Canelo fought earlier in his career were 2nd and 3rd tier fighters without any talent at all. They were just C level guys with little talent that were thrown in the ring with Canelo for him to beat up. He fought Lovemore N’Dou and Carlos Baldomir, but both of them were 39-years-old when he fought them. Those were the best guys he fought, but they were way past their prime, and much smaller than the heavy-bodied Canelo.

As we’ve seen in Canelo’s last two fights against Mayweather and Austin Trout, Canelo needs to take a lot of rest breaks along the ropes when he gets tired. When he does this against Angulo, he’s going to take a pounding and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Canelo badly hurt when that happens. He’s not going to be able to sit on the ropes and use head movement like he did against Trout without getting nailed. Angulo will light Canelo up if he goes to the ropes in hopes of getting his breath back, and it could be very bad for him.



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