Canelo v Kirkland hit 2 cities in 1 day!

By Boxing News - 03/03/2015 - Comments

caneloBy Dan Ambrose: Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) and 30-year-old James Kirkland (32-1, 28 KOs) will be hitting two cities today as part of a two-city promotional tour in Texas to attract fans into purchasing tickets for their fight on May 9th at the Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas.

The two fighters will visit Houston and San Antonio as part of the two-city tour.

Golden Boy Promotions, the promoters for the 24-year-old Canelo, are hoping to sellout the 45,000 seat Minute Maid stadium by May 9th. They’re obviously hoping that enough fans from the local area in Texas will be enough to sellout the stadium.

It doesn’t hurt that some of the tickets will be selling for just $10. Canelo was able to attract over 40,000 fans to come see him fight Austin Trout in April 2013 at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.

That was before Canelo was soundly beaten by Mayweather in September 2013, and that was before Canelo’s recent poor showing against Erislandy Lara last July in 2014. Canelo’s fights against Trout, Mayweather and Lara were not scintillating efforts by him, and for the boxing fans who have a memory of those fights, they may not be excited at seeing Canelo fight live.

Some fans only want to back a winner, and when they see a fighter isn’t what they thought he was, they tend to jump off the bandwagon. What hurts Canelo is that he’s now twice moved on from controversial wins over Trout and Lara instead of him fighting those guys again to erase the controversy over his wins.

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Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy recently said that Lara has to get in the back of a long line if he wants to fight Canelo again. What De La Hoya doesn’t realize is that Canelo’s controversial win hurt him more than it did Lara, because he’s the one who was marked from that win more than Lara.

By telling Lara to get in the back of the line, De La Hoya is unwittingly hurting his own fighter Canelo, because he’s the one that really needs to face Lara again to prove that he’s the better fighter. Canelo didn’t prove that last July, and by moving on instead of going back to show that he’s the better fighter, it looks to some boxing fans like Canelo doesn’t want any part of Lara after the bad experience he had with him.

The Canelo-Kirkland fight will be televised on regular non-pay-per-view HBO. There won’t be any titles on the line for the fight, as Kirkland is just an inactive fighter who hasn’t fought since 2013. He was picked out by De La Hoya and Golden Boy in hopes that the hardcore boxing fans will remember how good Kirkland was up until 2009, which is pretty much when Kirkland stopped fighting frequently. Kirkland had a prison stint that kept him out of action, and when he returned to the ring in 2011, he was knocked out in just one round by Nobuhiro Ishida. Since then, Kirkland has won his last four fights, albeit against largely weak opposition.



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