By Allan Fox: As far as Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr. is concerned, WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) isn’t cherry-picking by selecting a welterweight from two divisions below his own weight class to fight in Amir “King” Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) on May 7.
Mayweather doesn’t see that as cherry-picking on Canelo’s part, even though the Mexican fighter could wind up with a 20 pound weight advantage on the night of the fight on HBO pay-per-view. Mayweather sees it as a fair match-up for Canelo. Mayweather says that since fight fans wouldn’t say it’s cherry-picking for IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin to face him at middleweight, then the same fans shouldn’t get on Canelo’s case for fighting a guy from the 147lb division in 29-year-old Khan.
“Now everyone wants to say, ‘Canelo was cherry-picking! Canelo was cherry-picking!’ Not true,” Mayweather said to Fighthype.com. “I don’t think that people should be saying that Canelo is cherry-picking because they don’t say it’s cherry-picking when they ask for me to go up to 160 to fight Triple G, so, you know, I don’t think that’s fair.”
Boxing fans aren’t asking Mayweather to go up to 160 to fight Golovkin. The fans are asking Mayweather to fight at 154, which is where he previously held the WBA and WBC junior middleweight titles after beating Canelo in 2013. Golovkin already said that he would come down to 154 to fight Mayweather. It’s not as if Mayweather would need to come up to 160 to fight Golovkin.
It’s common knowledge that Canelo is a heavier fighter than Golovkin. Canelo comes into his fights from 175lbs to possibly even the 180s. Golovkin weighs in at around 170 each time he fights after making weight. If Mayweather was willing to fight Canelo, then he should be willing to fight Golovkin as well, because he’s lighter than Canelo.
Fans see the Canelo-Khan fight as a mismatch in size and power, and rightly so. It is a mismatch. Khan has been knocked out in the past twice by smaller fighters than the 170+lb Canelo. It stands to reason that if Khan can’t even handle the power of fighters like Breidis Prescott and Danny Garcia, then he probably won’t be able to handle the power of the much larger Canelo.
The fans want to see fighters facing appropriate opposition in their own weight classes rather than seeing a guy that uses catch-weights to gain an advantage over his opponents hand-picking a smaller more fragile guy from the welterweight division to fight. It wouldn’t be so troubling for fight fans if Canelo were willing to fight opposition from two divisions above his own weight class without a catch-weight.
If Canelo showed that he’s willing to fight light heavyweights like Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev, Artur Beterbiev, Eleider Alvarez and Adrzej Fonara, then I think the fans wouldn’t raise a major stink when he chose to pick out guys from the 147lb division to fight.
Canelo isn’t doing that though. He’s fighting a guy from the welterweight division after having won the WBC middleweight title at a catch-weight of 155lbs last November against Miguel Cotto. After Canelo defends his WBC title against Khan, he could very likely defend the title against Golovkin at a catch-weight of 155 if the World Boxing Council allows Canelo to force the catch-weight on Golovkin.
Many boxing fans think Mayweather cherry-picked during his career, especially during the tail end of his career when he was given a huge six-fight contract with Showtime/CBS. Rather than facing dangerous opposition like Shawn Porter and Keith Thurman, Mayweather fought Marcos Maidana twice, Robert Guerrero and Andre Brerto.
Those easy mismatches accounted for 4 of Mayweather’s 6 fights with Showtime. Mayweather did fight Manny Pacquiao and Canelo for the other two fights, but he still took it easy by fighting Guerrero, Maidana and Berto. If Mayweather wanted to show the fans how brave he was, then he should have fought Thurman, Porter, Amir Khan and Tim Bradley. Before Mayweather signed his six-fight contract with Showtime, he had failed to fight guys like Antonio Margarito and Paul Williams. Mayweather also chose not to fight Pacquiao until late in his career rather than facing him during his prime years in 2009.
If Mayweather could have shown that he wasn’t himself a cherry-picker during his career by fighting Gennady Golovkin, then he could make comment about other fighters like Canelo about cherry-picking.
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