By Chris Williams: The 24-year-old Saul “Canelo” Alvarez is insisting that he will be fighting next May in 2015 on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo even if the No.1 money PPV star in boxing Floyd Mayweather Jr is fighting on the same date.
Canelo says he’ll fight on that date on HBO PPV regardless of what plans Mayweather has of fighting on the same date on Showtime pay-per-view. With the pay-per-view industry not able to support duel PPV events on the same night, Canelo appears to be playing a game of chicken with Mayweather, possibly hoping Mayweather will back down and move off the date so that Canelo can have that date, as well as the Mexican holiday date in September all for himself.
Mayweather doesn’t appear to be backing down from Canelo’s challenge. He doesn’t care that Canelo could be fighting highly popular WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto next May on Cinco de Mayo, Mayweather is betting that he can bring in more pay-per-view buys than a Canelo-Cotto card.
“If they feel like they can compete, well then let’s see,” Mayweather said to Fighthype.com. “When you’re talking boxing, you’re talking Mayweather, man. We need to take Canelo’s last fight and look at his pay-per-view numbers and take Cotto’s last fight and look at his pay-per-view numbers, put ’em together and see who done better numbers. And see what they charge for the fight also.”
Canelo and Cotto have proven to be disappointments in their recent PPV fights in which they were the A-side. Cotto fought Sergio Martinez last June in a fight that brought in a little more than 300,000 PPV buys. Canelo has fought his last two fights against Alfredo Angulo and Erislandy Lara on PPV, and both brought in only around 300,000 PPV buys each.
It’s quite possible that a Canelo-Cotto fight will bring in little more than 600,000 PPV buys at best. If that’s as good as it gets for Canelo-Cotto then there’s no way they can outdo Mayweather no matter who he faces. Mayweather can always fight someone like Danny Garcia and bring in 1 million PPV buys. Cotto is really popular with his Puerto Rican fans, but so is Danny Garcia.
At the end of the day I expect the pay-per-view people to make the decision about who fights on Cinco de Mayo. They’ll look at who the bigger PPV attraction is and make their decision based on that. If it’s Mayweather then so be it. He clearly has shown that he’s a bigger PPV attraction than Canelo and Cotto, so that will have to be factored in when the decision is made in who gets the Mexican holiday fight dates.
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