(Photo Credit: Tom Hogan – Hogan Photos/Golden Boy Promotions) By Patrick McHugh: WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will be receiving a base purse of $3.5 million for his fight on Saturday night against former light welterweight champion Amir Khan at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Canelo will be getting a lot more than $3.5M the PPV money and other promotional money, according to ESPN.
Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya expects the fight to bring in 2 million buys on HBO. Even if it does half of that, Canelo will wind up making a lot of money. Khan will be getting $2 million. He’s expected to make $13 million. Canelo will likely be getting well above what Khan brings home for this fight given that he’s the A-side for this fight.
Other purses for Saturday’s Canelo-Khan card:
David Lemieux ($200,000) vs. Glen Tapia’s ($150,000)
Mauricio Herrera ($175,000) vs. Frankie Gomez ($90,000)
Curtis Stevens ($65,000) vs. Patrick Teixeira ($50,000)
As you can see, the purses for the card are slanted towards the top headliner fight in a huge way with Canelo and Khan getting the lion’s share of the money. The fight might not be the most interesting on the card though, as Lemieux-Tapia, Herrera-Gomez and Stevens-Teixeira all promise to be exciting fights. It remains to be seen whether the Khan vs. Canelo fight will wind up as entertaining because it’s different kind of fight.
Instead of Golden Boy Promotions matching Canelo against someone his own size from the middleweight division, they’ve picked out a fighter from two weight classes below him in Khan from the welterweight division. Canelo is facing a lighter fighter and one with a known chin problem. Golden Boy has Canelo sitting in a strong position to win the fight by giving him all the advantages in this fight by matching him against a welterweight.
“I feel great making the weight, and I’m look forward to a great fight [Saturday night],” said Canelo. “I know I’m fighting a fast fighter with a lot of experience, but I can also fight and I have a lot of experience also.”
Canelo didn’t look good making the weight. He looked very thin at the 155 weight that he weighed in at. Canelo looked just as thin as he did in his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, when he weighed in at 152lbs for their catch-weight fight. Canelo complained afterwards about the catch-weight, as he was not happy with having to drain down two extra pounds from 154 to 152. However, Canelo doesn’t have to use catch-weights any longer now that he’s the A-side and the WBC middleweight champion.
Canelo could weigh in at 160lbs if he wanted to, but he insists at fight at 155 instead of giving himself five extra pounds to play with. Considering that Canelo rehydrates into the 170s, it doesn’t make much sense for him to be continuing with his 155lb catch-weights. Some people feel the reason why Canelo is fighting at 155 isn’t for convenience, it’s because he wants an excuse to avoid interim WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. By now, Canelo knows that Golovkin will not fight him at 155, so it sets up a situation where Canelo will be able to escape criticism if Golovkin turns him down for his 155lb catch-weight request.
“I’m not one to say I’m going to be the 155-pound champion because it’s not a weight category,” Khan said. “That title puts me at 160. But there are some big names like GGG and I’m not saying ‘no’ to them. I want to see how the performance goes for this fight and then take it from there,” said Khan.
It’s interesting that Khan would see himself as the WBC middleweight champion at 160 rather than the 155lb catch-weight champion, which is how some boxing fans see Canelo due to his stubborn resistance to move off that weight to fight Golovkin and other fighters at the normal weight for the middleweight division. it looks like Khan doesn’t want to achievement his title if he beats Canelo to win the WBC middleweight title. If Khan were to keep the WBC title and continue Canelo’s tradition of fighting at 155, it would make Khan look like he caught the Canelo bug.
“It just depends what’s out there,” Khan said. “At the end of the day, I have to look after my health. I’m not going to fight guys who are naturally too big.”
Golovkin is the same size as Canelo. If Khan can hang with Canelo and beat him on Saturday, then there’s no excuse for Khan not to fight Golovkin because he’s no bigger than Canelo. He’s just a little taller at 5’10 ½” compared to the 5’9” Canelo.