By Dan Ambrose: The opponent for Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) isn’t yet decided for his next fight, but Golden Boy Promotions has locked down the date for the young Canelo’s match. Canelo, 25, will be fighting on May 7th on HBO pay-per-view. The weight that Canelo will be fighting at is still unknown as well.
Canelo and his trainer Eddie Reynoso have talked about 155lbs being a weight that he’s comfortable with right now, and it would seem likely that he’ll stick with that weight. While it’s not a big problem in pulling a welterweight or junior middleweight up to 155lbs to fight them at a catch-weight, it would potentially be a problem to ask a middleweight to melt down to 155 to fight Canelo.
The result would likely be the fighter winding up weight drained and unhappy about it, especially if Canelo rehydrates to 180+ and comes into the ring look like a light heavyweight rather than a middleweight.
Canelo and Golden Boy will be sitting down this month to discuss who his next opponent will be. With Canelo’s May 7th fight being on HBO PPV, it puts more emphasis on picking out a popular enough fighter to get boxing fans to pay to see it. The names that have been floated for Canelo’s next fight are Gabriel Rosado and Willie Monroe Jr.
If Golden Boy selects either of those fighters, they’d be making as big a mistake as Manny Pacquiao did in selecting Tim Bradley for his next fight on April 9th. The problem with Monroe and Rosado is that they lack the popularity to be credible opponents in a PPV fight. They both lost to Gennady Golovkin by knockout in 2013 and 2015 respectively, which makes them even worse as candidates for a PPV fight against Canelo.
It’s quite possible that Golden Boy will pick Rosado, and then count on Canelo’s large fan base purchasing the fight due to the Puerto Rico vs. Mexico rivalry that would be in play for that match-up.
Here are the potential opponents that Golden Boy will likely be selecting from for Canelo:
Gabriel Rosado
Willie Monroe Jr.
Andy Lee
Matthew Macklin
Vanes Martirosyan
Jorge Sebastian Heiland
Arif Magomedov
Michel Soro
Ryota Murata
Dominic Wade
Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam
Avtandil Khurtsidze
Daniel Geale
Sam Soliman
Ievgen Khytrov
Nick Blackwell
Antoine Douglas
Hugo Centeno
Canelo’s fight could take place at the MGM Grand/AEG-owned 20,000-seat Las Vegas Arena, according to Dan Rafael. The arena has a seating capacity of 20,000 seats. However, it’s not likely that Canelo will fill a place that big unless he was to fight someone popular like Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao. I can’t see either of those fighters choosing to fight Canelo now that he’s rehydrating up into the 170s and possibly higher. That’s just too much weight that they’d be giving up to Canelo.
We’re probably talking about Canelo having a weight advantage of close to 30 pounds if he were to fight a welterweight like Mayweather or Pacquiao. Canelo’s next fight could also take place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, or the Alamodome in San Antonio or Madison Square Garden in New York. If Canelo fights in New York, it likely needs to be against someone that can draw in that area like former WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee. He has a large Irish fan base in the New York area that would be very interested in seeing him fight for a world title against a popular fighter like Canelo.
“We have holds all over and we will see where we can make the best deal for Canelo’s fight,” said Golden Boy Promotions vice president Eric Gomez to ESN.com “But no site is locked in.”
Golden Boy will no doubt get the venue that they want. The question will they select an opponent with a big enough name to make fans eager to pay $60-70 to see Canelo fight on HBO PPV? That’s the big question, because if they select someone along the lines of some of Canelo’s recent opponents like James Kirkland, there will be very few fans willing to pay to see him.
Canelo brought in 900,000 pay-per-view buys on HBO for his last fight against Miguel Cotto last November. Canelo had a big name opponent and that obviously helped him bring in the buys.
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