By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KO’s) faces 24-years-old today, and his future is still very uncertain after a narrow, disappointing 12 round split decision win over Erislandy Lara (19-2-2, 12 KOs) last Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Canelo’s win left a lot of questions that will remain unanswered perhaps permanently because Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya closed the door on a second fight with the Cuban Lara.
The 24-year-old Canelo is going to need to make a decision about whether he wants to fight at junior middleweight or middleweight, because his last two fights have been at middleweight at 155 with him using his power and fame to pull junior middleweights – Alfredo Angulo and Lara – up to the weight class rather than him simply making weight at 154 to fight them the way normal fighters due in junior middleweight fights.
If Canelo can’t make weight any longer at 154, then he needs to move up to middleweight to try his hands at beating the best fighter in the division in Gennady Golovkin or perhaps the No.2 guy Miguel Cotto. But as far as Cotto goes, it’s still unclear whether he’s a legitimate champion in that weight class due to him beating an older fighter with a bum knee coming off of a 14 month layoff in Sergio Martinez.
If Cotto had beaten someone that was a little younger, healthier and active like Golovkin, you could call him a legitimate champion at 160, but right now there are major question marks about whether Cotto is a paper champion or the real thing. So in other words, Canelo facing Cotto will look to some fans as a situation where Canelo is ducking and dodging the Golovkin, the guy that hardcore boxing fans collectively see as the real world champion at 160.
For Canelo, he’s in a situation where even if he beats Cotto, he’s still not going to be seen by many fans as the real champion at middleweight, because he’ll have beaten a fighter only 5’7” in Cotto, who won his belt against a 39-year-old fighter with a bad knee and looking totally shot in Sergio Martinez.
Canelo will still have Cotto’s scalp on his resume and will technically be the WBC middleweight champion if he fights him at middleweight, but Golovkin will still the guy looming out there that will be recognized as the No.1 middleweight division. Ring Magazine has Cotto as their No.1 middleweight, but we’re talking about a small number of people with that organization that made that decision.
Overall, boxing fans as a whole don’t pay attention to rankings like that, and see Golovkin as the No.1 fighter in the middleweight division. That’s not going to change even if Canelo were to beat Cotto, which I have serious doubts that he can accomplish.
With Canelo weighing in at 170+ for his fights at junior middleweight after he rehydrates, he needs to give up on the 154 pound division and move up in weight to middleweight in order to fight guys his own size and weight. If Floyd Mayweather Jr or Manny Pacquiao decide they want to fight Canelo, then he can always come down from middleweight to fight them at junior middleweight. But in the meantime, Canelo should be at 160 to face the likes of Golovkin, Peter Quillin, Sam Soliman, Daniel Jacobs.
We’ve seen that Canelo has problems against slick fighters in his fights against Lara, Mayweather and Austin Trout, and he mainly seems to do well against slow guys like Alfredo Angulo. That’s why it would be better for Canelo to move up to 160, because the fighters are slower in that division and he wouldn’t have to worry about being out-boxed by a faster guy like we’ve seen in his fights against Lara, Trout and Mayweather.
Canelo arguably lost all three of those fights despite the judges giving him victories against Lara and Trout.
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