By Chris Williams: If former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez wants to be stubborn about fighting on Cinco de Mayo next May despite WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr already planning on fighting on that date on Showtime PPV, then Canelo is going to need to accept that his likely catch-weight fight against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto will bring in far, far less PPV buys than what it would have done if Canelo and Cotto had the May Cinco de Mayo holiday date all to themselves.
“Yes, I plan on fighting in May,” Mayweather told Fighthype.com.
Canelo might be young and stubborn about not wanting to move off of the May date, but I bet Cotto isn’t seeing things in the same light. If he’s going to fight Canelo, he’s going to want to make sure that he can maximize the PPV numbers, and he’s not going to be able to do that with Mayweather fighting on the same night.
I can see Cotto telling Canelo, ‘Forget it, I’m not fighting you on Cinco de Mayo if Mayweather is going to share the same date.’ Cotto is 33, and he doesn’t have much longer in the sport. He can’t afford to fight a big name like Canelo and have a huge portion of the PPV sales siphoned off by Mayweather fighting on the same night.
Since Cotto is promoted by Bob Arum of Top Rank, let’s hope that Arum opts move the fight off of Cinco de Mayo, because if he plays a game of chicken against Mayweather, he might end up losing badly with the Canelo-Cotto fight bringing in much lower PPV totals due to Mayweather siphoning off many of them.
Neither Cotto nor Canelo have proven themselves to be a huge pay per view draw when they’re not positioned against the likes of Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao. As it is we’re probably looking at a fight that would be lucky to do 500,000 PPV buys even without Mayweather fighting on the same date. But with Mayweather not willing to move off the May date, it puts Canelo and Cotto in a situation where their fight might just be stuck doing the same number that Canelo’s fights have been bringing in recently with it doing little more than 300,000 buys.
Mayweather could put the pressure on Canelo and Cotto to veer away from fighting in May if Mayweather picks a decent opponent like Amir Khan to fight. He’s probably the only guy that Mayweather could fight right now short of Pacquiao or Gennady Golovkin that will be a big enough name to scare the likes of Canelo and Cotto from fighting in May.
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