By Dan Ambrose: As of now former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1, 31 KOs) is scheduled to be fighting on the May 2nd Cinco de Mayo holiday against James Kirkland (32-1, 28 KOs) at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
This is one of the two Mexican fight dates that the 24-year-old Canelo wants to fight each year; the other date is in September on the Mexican Independence Day holiday. The problem here is Floyd Mayweather Jr has already staked out the May 2nd date for his next fight, be it against Manny Pacquiao or perhaps another opponent if the fight can’t get made.
Canelo’s promoter Oscar de La Hoya is saying that Canelo will move off the May 2nd date, but ONLY if Mayweather fights Pacquiao. If Mayweather decides to face any other fighter, Canelo will stay on May 2nd and fight on HBO while Mayweather has his fight on the same night on Showtime pay-per-view. It goes without saying that this is a situation where Canelo and De La Hoya will be asking for trouble – and possibly really low ratings.
Canelo doesn’t have the popularity yet at this point in his career for him to be trying to compete against a superstar like Mayweather, and if he tries to compete against him, he’s going to be sabotaging his own efforts.
Canelo is still a fighter that the casual boxing fans have yet to learn about, and he needs to be visible in situations where he has no competition in terms of other fighters fighting on competing networks on the same night he fights.
“Canelo is fighting on May 2. Period. Now, if the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight happens, that’s the fight we’ll move for, and we have May 9 on hold for that. But that’s it,” De La Hoya told Kevin Iole at Yahoo Sports. “Otherwise, no matter what else may go on May 2, Canelo will be fighting Kirkland in Texas on that date. You can bank on it.”
In this situation, De La Hoya is seemingly empowering the 24-year-old Canelo’s decision to compete against Mayweather if he fights someone other than Pacquiao. Instead of De La Hoya being the voice of reason to explain to Canelo that he’s hurting his own career if he decides to try and compete against the more popular Mayweather by fighting on the same night, you’ve got De La Hoya saying Canelo will fight “no matter what else may go on May 2nd.”
It would be a pity if Canelo were to lose out on being seen by massive amounts of boxing fans in 2015, and possibly 2016 by his decision to fight on the same night as Mayweather. That would put Canelo in a situation where might not have a night all to himself until Mayweather retires from the sport in 2017.
You can you imagine all the fans that won’t get a chance to see Canelo fight if he’s going to be routinely fighting on the same night as Mayweather but on a different network?
With the constant influx of new fighters in the sport, Canelo could get passed up by a younger star by the time Mayweather retires in 2016 or 2017. This means that Canelo would have a new star that would be potentially crowding him out at the same time that he’s trying to be seen for the first time by many casual boxing fans.
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