By Dan Ambrose: Bernard Hopkins of Golden Boy Promotions says WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s next fight is expected to be announced very soon for his May 7 date on HBO pay-per-view. Hopkins isn’t ready to say who the 25-year-old Canelo’s next opponent is, but from the sounds of it, he seems to have a pretty good idea who he’ll be facing on that date.
The names that have been floated in the recent past are Gabriel Rosado and Vanes Martiroyan. Former world title challenger Willie Monroe Jr’s name has also been mentioned in the past, but it doesn’t look like he’s someone that Golden Boy considering for this fight.
“We’ve got a big fight coming up with Canelo,” Hopkins said to esnewsreporting. “This is the first time that Mayweather doesn’t have that date in May. Now we have Canelo stepping in. It will be announced soon, very soon.”
It’s pretty important that Golden Boy selects a decent name for Canelo to fight because the fight will be televised on HBO PPV. They can’t just have anyone brought into the ring to face Canelo. It has to be someone good enough to attract fans to want to pay $60 to $70 of their hard-earned money to see Canelo fight. This means that Golden Boy is going to need to raise the bar for this fight by not trotting out James Kirkland, Alfredo Angulo or Erislandy Lara to face Canelo, because the fans won’t likely go for the idea of paying to see those fights. Likewise, if Martirosyan or Rosado are picked out, it’s not going to interest the knowledgeable fans into wanting to pay to see Canelo.
The idea behind PPV fights is to have high profile opponents face each other. Rosado has won only one fight in the last four years. If Golden Boy and Canelo select him, they would obviously be counting on the casual boxing fans being totally 100 percent ignorant about Rosado.
If the fans had a clue that Rosado’s record in his last 6 fights was 1-4-1, I think they wouldn’t be too thrilled at paying to see the mismatch between him and Canelo. Vanes Martirosyan isn’t much better. He’s lost 2 out of his last 5 fights in the past three years. That’s not good when you’re looking for an opponent to fight on PPV.
WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith is a name that was mentioned a while back as a potential opponent for Canelo. There are two things wrong with Smith as an opponent. 1. Liam Smith is totally unknown among the casual fans in the U.S. 2. Liam Smith is a junior middleweight and not a middleweight. There’s no reason why Canelo should be fighting a junior middleweight in defending his WBC middleweight title. If he wants to fight junior middleweights, then he needs to vacate his WBC middleweight title and let someone take over as the champion who believes in fighting guys from that weight class and defends it at the full weight for the division.
It’s going to be interesting to see if Canelo chooses a scrub to defend his WBC title against rather than a quality opponent. I just wonder what HBO is going to say when/if Canelo presents a weak opponent for their approval for his May 7 fight on HBO PPV.
Canelo is taking an interim defense of his WBC title before he supposedly faces Gennady Golovkin later this year. Many boxing fans doubt that Canelo will ever face Golovkin. They believe that after Canelo takes care of his voluntary defense in May, he’ll then either vacate his WBC middleweight title or wait for the WBC to change the rules to allow their champions to use catch-weights for all of their title defenses, not just for the voluntary defenses. When/if this happens, Golovkin will likely need to make a decision whether to face Canelo at a catch-weight of 155 or move on and give up on the idea of fighting for the WBC middleweight title. If Golovkin agrees to fight Canelo at a catch-weight, then I see Canelo vacating the title anyway with some excuse for why he chose to do so. In other words, I don’t think Canelo will agree to fight Golovkin no matter what hoops he chooses to jump through in trying to make the fight.
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