Hunter not in favor of Canelo Alvarez’s catch-weights

By Boxing News - 05/02/2016 - Comments

canelo48By Dan Ambrose: Virgil Hunter, the trainer for Amir Khan, is not in favor of WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s habit of fighting at a catch-weight of 155lbs, and he thinks it’s bad for the sport if Canelo tries to insist that his opponents fight him at a catch-weight rather than at the normal weight for the middleweight division.

A fight between Canelo and interim WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin could come down to whether or not Canelo is going to insist that Golovkin fight him at 155 later this year. Golovkin has already said he won’t move down in weight from 160 because he doesn’t believe he has to.

Golovkin wants to compete for the WBC belt at the normal weight and not fight against a guy that feels he needs a handicap in order to face him. Some boxing fans think Canelo wants the 155lb catch-weight for the Golovkin fight so that he can possibly weaken the Kazakhstan star enough to beat him. Golovkin isn’t going for that, and he’s not going to be forced to do it.

To Golovkin and his team, Canelo either fights him at the full weight for the middleweight division or he gives up his WBC title. Golovkin is ready for Canelo to just give him the WBC title if he’s not feeling up to fighting him. Golovkin is now saying “Give me my belt” to Canelo.

“Once you’re over 154, you’re a middleweight,” said Virgil Hunter to Fighthype.com. “So if he [Canelo] wants to fight at 155, then that’s okay for him. I don’t think you should really dictate what the other guy weighs if it’s considered a middleweight fight, particularly if you have a middleweight belt. If you have the middleweight belt, then it means you fight for the middleweight championship. If the belt is involved in the fight, then it means your defending the middleweight title. So to dictate what the weight the other guy is to be…I’ll just have to sit back and wait and see if it does come to that. I think it’s going to send the game in the wrong direction. It’s going to open up a lot of questions, but at the same time, you’re going to have influential people that are going to support that. But it’s going to have some fans – unless their groupies – upset about that. You just can’t get around a middleweight champion defending a title, but at the same time, let the other guy weigh what he wants to weigh,” said Hunter.

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Hunter says that he doesn’t think Canelo should be dictating what his opponents weigh. As long as they can make weight for the middleweight division, then it shouldn’t matter what they weigh.

Manny Pacquiao was one of the ones that started using the catch-weights a number of years ago to fight bigger guys. He had fighters like Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito come down in weight to fight him, and it worked in Pacquiao’s favor, as he was able to win two titles that way in capturing the WBO welterweight and WBC junior middleweight belts.

The problem is that younger fighters like Canelo caught the catch-weight bug and has been using it ever since 2013 for his fights. The middleweight division starts at 155, and the fighters are supposed to be able to weigh-in from 155 to 160. But with Canelo fighting at 155, it means that his opponents cannot go above that weight. They can weigh at or below that number, but not above it. Some boxing fans don’t see that as fair, as they see this as not middleweight.

Rather it’s a whole new weight division that Canelo has created because it only has one weight at 155, which means that the chances are fairly high that Canelo’s opponents would come in below 155 because they would be concerned about coming over the 155lb limit when weighing in. So instead of Golovkin being a middleweight for a fight against Canelo, he would be a junior middleweight.

If popular fighters like Canelo are able to use their popularity to create their own weight classes by fighting at catch-weights, then it gives them a lot of power to change the game, because they can use that weight to their advantage against normal middleweights. Golovkin has said no to it, but how many other fighters in the middleweight division would be able to have the conviction to put their foot down to Canelo and his catch-weights?

My guess is not too many. Other fighters would likely do whatever they had to in order to get a payday fight against Canelo. If they think that they’ll lose out a fight against Canelo if they turn down his catch-weight request, then they obviously are going to agree to it readily so they can get the fight and the payday. That’s why it’s potentially bad for the sport if Canelo – and other fighters – are going to be using catch-weights, because there’s the potential for them to game the system by using it to their advantage to weaken their opponents. There’s also the potential for more popular fighters to use catch-weights as a condition for their opponents to fight them.

Canelo will be defending his WBC middleweight title this Saturday night against welterweight Amir Khan at a catch-weight of 155lbs at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight will be televised on HBO PPV. Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy picked a welterweight for Canelo to defend his WBC middleweight title against rather than a middleweight.