By Dan Ambrose: With three disappointing fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr, Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) is no longer looking like the guy that will be able to carry the baton for Manny Pacquiao and Mayweather when they retire from the spot.
More and more, Canelo is looking like a fighter who was more hype than substance. Perhaps for that reason, World Boxing Council president Mauricio Sulaiman feels that the 24-year-old Canelo badly needs the fight against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto right now.
“Canelo needs that fight,” Sulaiman said via Fightnews.com. “After losing to Mayweather and his wins against Alfredo Angulo and Erislandy Lara, it’s necessary because experts and fans expect a Canelo with better stand of boxing and have been wanting a good, more competitive fight.”
Ignoring Canelo’s loss to Mayweather, I think it’s more of a case of experts and fans wanting to see Canelo win his fights in a more conclusive way instead of with controversy. Canelo beat both Trout and Lara by controversial decisions where he failed to establish that he was better than them.
Canelo then compounded the problem by moving on both times rather than giving the fighters a rematch, which has given some boxing fans the impression that Canelo doesn’t care if he fails to prove that he’s better than an opponent. He’ll take a win anyway he can get it. That’s not the ideal way to win fights if you want to be seen as legitimate replacement for the bigger pay-per-view stars.
Canelo also has other problems that are hurting him and will likely continue to hurt him during his career. He weighs as much as middleweight Gennedy Golovkin, yet Canelo persists in fighting at junior middleweight rather than moving up to fight guys his own weight. To some, it looks like Canelo wants to use his size advantage over lighter junior middleweights and welterweights to gain an advantage.
It’s look really bad if Canelo beats Cotto and then vacates the WBC middleweight belt rather than facing Golovkin to defend the title against the guy who is considered to be the best fighter in the division. It’s widely thought that the Cotto-Canelo fight is a one-shot deal for Canelo with him just wanting to beat Cotto, get the popularity with the casual boxing fans that will come with the victory, and then vacate the belt quickly rather than facing Golovkin.
Canelo would then continue fighting at 154, even though there is no one for him to fight in that division unless he wants to fight Lara, Demetrius Andrade and the Charlo twins. I think Canelo won’t be fighting any of those guys.
Canelo moving back down to 154 would likely be done in order for Canelo to stay close enough to 147 in order to drag up the smaller guys like Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, and Amir Khan to fight him. If Canelo can stay at 154, he can lure the top welterweights to face him and he’s of course have a big weight and/or strength advantage over them like he did against Matthew Hatton, Josesito Lopez, Shane Mosley, and Alfonso Gomez.
Comments are closed.