By Dan Ambrose: This Saturday night a big crowd is expected for the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) vs. James Kirkland (32-1, 28 KOs) fight at the Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas. According to Fight news, Golden boy Promotions match-maker Eric Gomez expects a huge crowd showing up to see the two fighters.
Over 30,000 tickets have already been sold for the fight. The Minute Maid Park maximum seating capacity is 40,963. By Saturday the venue could be close to selling out.
The ticket prices for the Canelo-Kirkland fight are as follows: $350, $150, $100, $50, $25 and $10. With ticket prices this cheap, it’s not surprising that they’ve sold over 30,000. If you compare those ticket prices to the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao ticket prices. It was light night and day.
Golden Boy wants to turn Canelo into the guy that will take over as the No.1 PPV star after Mayweather and Pacquiao retire from boxing. If Canelo does take over for Mayweather and Canelo as the top PPV attraction, he’ll pale in comparison to the talent of those two fighters.
We’ll definitely see a downward plunge in talent with Canelo being the top guy. Canelo has already beaten badly by Mayweather, and almost beaten by Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. There are obviously better fighters than Canelo in the sport, such as Gennady Golovkin, but he doesn’t have a built in fan base like Canelo has in the United States.
Canelo, 24, tends to draw a lot of fans when he fights in Texas. His fight two years ago against Austin Trout brought in a ton of fans at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. Many of the tickets were inexpensive and this obviously helped attract fans.
“We’re already at 30,000 and a lot of the promotion and a lot of the marketing kicks in this week,” said Gomez via Fightnews.com. “We had a steady sales day yesterday. I don’t know where we’re at currently, but I’m expecting a huge, huge crowd. Whether it sells out or not, I don’t know.”
If the 31-year-old Kirkland can somehow pull off an upset in this fight against the red-headed Canelo, it would be a huge blow to his career. Yeah, Canelo has already been beaten by Mayweather in the past, but a loss to Kirkland would be a clear sign that Canelo is not the answer that the boxing world is looking for as the next No.1 PPV star.
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