(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Chris Williams: Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya says that he’s been given “strict orders” by 23-year-old Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (43-1-1, 31 KO’s) to schedule him for the Mexican holidays in September on the Mexican Independence Day weekend and in May on Cinco de Mayo.
Canelo also said that he’s going to be fighting on those dates. The problem is WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KO’s) has been sitting on those dates off and on since 2007 and he’s by far a much, much bigger pay-per-view draw than Canelo right now.
It’s possible Canelo will be a big PPV draw in the future, but right now the numbers for his recent fight against Alfredo Angulo just don’t reflect that. That fight drew just 350,000 PPV buys on Showtime compared to the huge 1 million+ that Mayweather has been bringing in. What Canelo is doing is ultimately self-defeating because he’s going to be seen by far less people if he challenges Mayweather and gets seen by fewer people than if he were to pick a date where he has no competition.
“Yes, of course, I want to re-take those dates and bring them back,” Canelo said via RingTV.com. “Those dates are Mexican dates. For next year, I will be fighting and I want to be fighting on those dates.”
If Canelo insists on fighting on the same date as Mayweather, then he’s either going to need to be put on the undercard of his fights or combined in a split site PPV. The only other way around that is for Canelo to fight on HBO, because there’s no way that Showtime is going to have two separate PPV events on September 13th and May 2nd. They can’t ask boxing fans to pay for two separate PPV events for each of those dates, so Canelo is going to need to make a decision, because he doesn’t have the cache yet to outmuscle Mayweather for his dates.
Even if Canelo fights Miguel Cotto, I still doubt that fight will pull in more than 500,000 PPV buys. Cotto’s recent fight against Sergio Martinez drew only 350,000 buys. As you can see, neither Canelo nor Cotto are bringing in the kinds of numbers to push Mayweather off of his dates.
I imagine Showtime Boxing vice president Stephen Espinoza makes the final decision which of the two fighters – Canelo or Mayweather – gets the September and May fight dates. It’s kind of a no-brainer if you put the question to Espinoza because he’ll make a decision based on a guy who has only brought in 350,000 PPV buys in his only fight on PPV where he was the A-side in Canelo, and a guy who brings in over 1 million PPV buys routinely in Mayweather. Which fighter will do more for Showtime on those two dates – Mayweather or Canelo? I think it’s obvious that Mayweather is the guy.
De La Hoya said via RingTV, “Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez has given me strict orders. Obviously, he wants to follow in the footsteps of the great champions hailing from Mexico like Julio Cesar Chavez, fighters that have started the tradition of fighting on Cinco de Mayo and started the tradition of fighting in September.”
If Canelo pushes Mayweather for his dates, they’ll both do poor PPV numbers if Showtime were to allow that to happen, and I don’t think they will. If Canelo were to fight on HBO, then he could compete with Mayweather, although I think that would be a bad decision on Canelo’s part. He’s better off waiting for Mayweather to retire from boxing before he starts challenging him for his dates, because Canelo will only wind up with viewer eyeballs watching his fights than if he were to be smart and pick another date.
None of this is going to matter if Canelo doesn’t beat Erislandy Lara in their fight on July 12th. If Canelo gets beaten by Lara then he can try and crowd Mayweather out all he wants for his May and September dates, but I don’t see it happening.
If Canelo keeps losing each time he’s put in with a good opponent, it’s going to be hard to ask boxing fans to pay to see his fights at all on PPV. Why would boxing fans want to pay to see someone lose when they can watch them lose for free on regular Showtime or HBO.
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