By Dan Ambrose: It’s looking like former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-1-1, 31 KOs) will be fighting the soon to be 37-year-old former IBF welterweight champion Joshua Clottey (38-4, 22 KOs) this December.
Steve Kim is talking about Clottey being the one that the 24-year-old Canelo could be facing next instead of a more dangerous opponent like Erislandy Lara, Demetrius Andrade or James Kirkland.
Clottey vs. Canelo isn’t a great fight, and it’s definitely not pay-per-view worthy. Golden Boy Promotions vice president Eric Gomez told ESPN this past week that Canelo’s next fight in December won’t be on pay-per-view. Gomez said it wouldn’t be on PPV because the market was over-saturated with too many PPV fights. But the closer reality is that there would be no way that Canelo and Golden Boy could sell Canelo vs. Clottey on PPV. Canelo-Clottey isn’t even a good fight for regular non-PPV Showtime. I see this as an ESPN Friday Night Fights undercard fight rather than any kind of main event type of fight.
It was bad enough that Canelo’s fights against Alfredo Angulo and Lara were on PPV. Those were not good fights for PPV and you have to wonder if Golden Boy recommended to Canelo that they not put those fights on PPV.
The idea behind Clottey being the likely opponent for Canelo is that Golden Boy Promotions wants to make sure that Canelo gets a sure thing victory, because he’s got a potential big payday fight coming up next year against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) in a likely catch-weight fight.
Canelo was arguably beaten in his last fight against Lara in July, and it’s obviously too dangerous at this point to put Canelo in with Kirkland or Andrade, because they could expose Canelo as well. We saw Floyd Mayweather Jr defeat Canelo last September by an easy 12 round decision.
Canelo looked terrible in that fight. He did rebound from the loss by beating a badly weight drained Alfredo Angulo last March by a 10th round TKO, but that was an empty win for Canelo due to Angulo having to shed a whopping 34 pounds of fat in training camp.
Clottey, #3 WBA, is coming off of an upset win over 40-year-old Anthony Mundine from last April in Australia. It was a good win for Clottey, and easily the biggest win for him since his stoppage victory over Zab Judah way back in 2008.
Clottey’s wins since then have come against weaker opposition. He lost a one-sided 12 round decision to a prime Manny Pacquiao in 2010. After that fight, Clottey didn’t fight for a year and a half until coming back to defeat Calvin Green by a 2nd round stoppage in November 2011. Clottey has since won two fights, beating Dashon Johnson and Mundine.
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