By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions is stacking the undercard for the May 7 Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Amir Khan card on HBO pay-per-view. They were unable to get the heavyweight match-up between interim WBA champion Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz vs. Alexander Ustinov. The undercard is a mixed bag with the wrong guys fighting each other, and in the case of David Lemieux, he’s fight a junior middleweight rather than a middleweight in Glen Tapia. How do you have a PPV card on HBO where the first two fights involve fighters facing smaller guys in what appear to be mismatches? That just strikes me as wrong. Lemieux should have been put in with Curtis Stevens, and Canelo should be fighting at least a middleweight.
Nevertheless, they were able to get the following fights: Former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux vs. Glen Tapia, welterweight Mauricio Herrera vs. Frankie Gomez, and former middleweight world title challenger Curtis Stevens vs. Patrick Teixeira.
Having Lemieux (34-3, 31 KOs) face Tapia (23-2, 15 KOs) in the co-feature isn’t a great fight. Tapia isn’t a big name, and he’s not ranked in top 15 by any of the sanctioning bodies at this time. The 26-year-old Tapia hasn’t fought in the last 10 months and by the time he steps foot inside the ring, he’ll have been out of action for 12 months. Tapia was stopped in his last fight by Michel Soro last May.
I think it would be better if Golden Boy Promotions found a better fight for the co-feature. Lemieux-Tapia is a mismatch that would be better off as the first fight of the night on TV. However, you can understand why Golden Boy is placing the Lemieux vs. Tapia fight as the co-feature bout. They obviously want to help setup a fight between Lemieux and Canelo Alvarez at some point.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Golden Boy looks to make the Canelo-Lemieux fight this year in September rather than put it off into the future. What this means is that Golden Boy might choose to have Canelo swerve the fight against his WBC mandatory challenger Gennady Golovkin in order to have Canelo face Lemieux. Canelo will likely need to vacate his WBC title for failing to defend it against Golovkin. However, it’s possible that the WBC could choose to let Canelo keep his WBC title rather than stripping him in favor of a less popular fighter like Golovkin.
The clash between welterweights Mauricio Herrera and Frankie Gomez would be better if they had a catch-weigh of 150 just in case Gomez isn’t able to make the 147lb limit. It’s a decent fight, but I don’t see either of these guys going anywhere at 147.
“Here’s what I’m told is on Canelo-Khan PPV: Lemieux-Tapia co, Mauricio Herrera-Frankie Gomez & Curtis Stevens-Patrick Teixeira #boxing,” said Dan Rafael on his Twitter. “Canelo-Khan will be shown in movie theaters around the US. I’m told Luis Ortiz-Ustinov deal couldn’t be made in order to have fight on Canelo-Khan PPV. Here’s what I am told will be on it.”
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