De La Hoya talks matching Canelo against Lemieux

By Boxing News - 11/17/2015 - Comments

Boxing: Golovkin vs LemieuxBy Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya says he’s going to take a wait and see approach with his fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) after his fight this Saturday night against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) on HBO PPV.

De La Hoya isn’t sure if Canelo is ready to move up to the middleweight division to face guys like Golden Boy Promotions fighter David Lemieux, who recently was knocked out by Gennady Golovkin last month.

De La Hoya made it clear recently that he has no intentions of matching Canelo against Golovkin because A. he wants the fight to “marinate” and B. Canelo isn’t a natural middleweight [160lbs] fighter yet. However, De La Hoya was asked if he would be willing to match Canelo against Lemieux, and instead of ruling out the idea of him letting that fight take place, De La Hoya said he’ll take a wait and see approach to that fight.

“We’ll have to wait and see because Canelo can make 154 easy,” De La Hoya said to Ringtv about Canelo potentially facing Lemieux next. “For Kirkland, he was 154 ½’. We’ll have to wait and see how he [Canelo] feels. He’s not a middleweight. Not now, but will he? Yes, he will be.”

So it looks like De La Hoya might be willing to match Canelo against Lemieux if Canelo beats Cotto next Saturday, but he’s not interested in letting him fight Golovkin due to his interest in letting that fight marinate more. I can understand that from De La Hoya’s point of view. But even putting Canelo in with Lemieux could be a dangerous fight for De La Hoya’s golden goose, because Lemieux has the kind of punching power that KO anybody in the 160lb division if he lands clean.

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Canelo isn’t exactly the hardest fighter to hit with power shots, is he? We saw James Kirkland stun Canelo in their recent fight last May. Canelo got the knockout victory in the 3rd round, but there was a moment there in the 2nd round where Canelo looked like he was on the verge of being knocked out. Lemieux has better boxing skills, punching power and hand speed than Kirkland. If Canelo gets nailed by Lemieux, it could be goodbye golden goose.

I think De La Hoya can get away with matching Canelo against Lemieux next as long as he’s upfront with his reasons for not matching Canelo against Golovkin. If De La Hoya reminds the boxing public that he wants to wait a while to let the Canelo-Golovkin fight build more, then they’ll understand this and not hammer De La Hoya and Canelo too badly.

While the Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. became a much bigger fighter due to them waiting five years before making it happen, I don’t think it’s going to be the same situation with the Golovkin-Canelo fight. I think they need to make that fight sooner rather than later because of the potential of Canelo getting beaten again. He’s not someone who is dominating his competition the way that Golovkin, and he’s already been given two controversial wins over Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara.

Sooner or later, the judges are going to get the scoring correct and Canelo will have another loss on his hands. Once that happens, De La Hoya’s dreams of the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight being a big money fight will be down the drain in the same way that Top Rank promoter Bob Arum’s plans on making a big fight between Juan Manuel Lopez vs. Yuriorkis Gamboa went down the drain with Lopez losing to Orlando Salido.



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