By Dan Ambrose: Ever since Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) defeated Miguel Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) last month to win the WBC middleweight title, he’s been getting really torn apart by boxing fans on his Instagram.
The fans are very, very unhappy with Canelo talking about wanting to continue to fight at a catch-weight of 155lbs despite him holding onto the WBC middleweight title now. On almost every Instagram post by Canelo, the fans barbeque him about the catch-weight thing. They want Canelo to fight at the full weight of 160lbs against Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and in all of his other title defenses to come in the future.
The fans don’t want to see Canelo using his power as the WBC champion to pressure his challengers to fight him at 155lbs or whatever other catch-weight that he could possibly think of in order to gain an edge over them.
If Canelo, 25, decides he’s going to ignore the fans and look to force all of his opponents to fight at 155 in a ‘take it or leave’ it approach, then it’s going to be up to the World Boxing Council to look to gain some control over the situation by informing Canelo that he can’t push his catch-weights on the mandatory challengers like GGG or whoever comes after him.
It’s still unclear how long Golovkin will wait for a fight against Canelo. If the WBC says that Canelo can now use the next year to fight two voluntary defenses rather than face Golovkin like they’d originally talked about him doing, then it might be in Golovkin’s best interest to move on because I don’t think Canelo will bother facing him once he’s exhausted those two voluntary defenses.
If the WBC isn’t going to push Canelo to defend his title against Golovkin, then it’s a waste of time for Golovkin to wait around. He’d only find himself in the same position as the challengers that waited for Floyd Mayweather Jr. to face them for his WBC title at 147 and 154. You can wait literally forever a title shot if the WBC isn’t going to step in and help in the matter.
Canelo says that he’ll defend his WBC middleweight title at 155, his desired weight right now. It’s up to Golovkin to decide if he wants to wait to see if the WBC will tell Canelo he can’t do that, or simply call his bluff and agree to fight him at that weight. I think the smarter thing for Golovkin to do is to simply agree to the 155lb weight.
I don’t think the WBC is going to step in and tell Canelo what he can or can’t do. That means that if Golovkin wants the fight against Canelo really bad, then he might have to agree to the 155lb catch-weight and then hope that Canelo doesn’t ask him to jump through another big hoop in order to get the fight.
The only other thing that Canelo can do besides the strength-draining 155lb catch-weight to make it complicated for a fight is to negotiate tough on the purse. If Canelo asks for a huge purse split that makes the fight not even worthwhile to take, then Golovkin will have to decide whether the combination of the small purse and the 155lb catch-weight is worth it for him to take the fight with Canelo to try and win the WBC middleweight title.
On the one hand it could potentially be a bad deal for Golovkin if he agrees to those things, but on the other it could help his career if he faces Canelo and beats him badly. Golovkin’s popularity will likely skyrocket if he faces Canelo on HBO pay-per-view and wins the fight by a knockout or a one-sided 12 round decision. Not only would Golovkin have the WBC middleweight title after a fight like that, but he would be a more popular fighter than he is now.
Golovkin already said in the past that he would fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. at 154. He needs to look at Canelo in the same light and agree to the catch-weight of 155, if that’s what Canelo insists on for them to fight. In the best possible world, the WBC would step in and tell Canelo that he can’t force a fight against Golovkin at 155lbs, but if the WBC isn’t going to do that for whatever reason, then Golovkin will need to agree to whatever catch-weight that Canelo asks for in order to get the fight.
It probably won’t hurt Golovkin as much as it does Canelo, because he doesn’t rehydrate as high as Canelo does. The thing with Canelo is he’s used to doing the dehydration/rehydration thing, so he’s obviously very good at it and has proven that he can rehydrate huge amounts of weight without getting weakened.
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