By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya says he’d have a talk with his willful fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to try and persuade him to move off the May 2nd fight date next year if the Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr mega-fight gets made for that date.
That’s a big if right now because Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum recently said that the May 2nd date belonged to Canelo because of him being Mexican and that fight date falling on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo.
“Obviously if Mayweather-Pacquiao happens it would be my obligation to go and talk to Canelo and maybe, kind of convince him to move out of that date,” De La Hoya said. “But this kid is determined, and he wants to fight Cinco De Mayo.”
I don’t think Canelo would be too happy if De La Hoya were to cave in and try to move him off the date just because Mayweather and Pacquiao were to fight on that date. Canelo seems resistant to moving off that date regardless of the situation.
In other words, he might just be willing to steer his fight against Miguel Cotto into a cliff by stubbornly sticking it out on the May 2nd date even though it would likely mean that the fight would wind up with far fewer pay-per-view buys than it would if Canelo would agree to move to a different date that Pacquiao and Mayweather aren’t fighting.
If Canelo refuses to move off the May 2nd date, he could wind up as his own worst enemy in sabotaging his own fight against Cotto. If Cotto is willing to go along the 24-year-old instead of being the voice of reason and using his age to see things clearly, he go down with Canelo with their fight losing massive amounts of pay-per-view buys.
Canelo would likely be happy if De La Hoya was willing to still support his fight Cotto with the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight taking place on the same date, because it would be a sign that De La Hoya was firmly behind the red-haired Canelo. But if De La Hoya just blindly does that without talking sense to Canelo then he’ll not be doing his job as a promoter.
Ultimately whether the Cotto-Canelo or the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight takes place on May 2nd could be determined by Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum. If he decides he’d rather have the Cotto-Canelo fight take place on that date then he can definitely block the more lucrative Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight in order to make that happen.
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