Canelo to fight on December 10 on regular HBO

By Boxing News - 06/30/2016 - Comments

Image: Canelo to fight on December 10 on regular HBO

By Dan Ambrose: Besides his fight on September 17th against WBO light middleweight champion Liam Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs), former WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) plans on making a quick return on December 10 on regular HBO against an opponent still to be determined, according to Dan Rafael.

The fact that Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy are looking to bring him back so quickly after the Liam Smith fight tells you that they see him beating the British fighter with ease. Three months is not a lot of time for a fighter to come back from fighting in a world title match against a champion. However in this case, Canelo is facing what many see as the weakest of the champions at 154 in Smith.

For that matter, Canelo is fighting a champion that likely would be blown out of the water by top contenders like Demetrious Andrade, Austin Trout, Julian Williams, Charles Hatley, Vanes Martirosyan, Michel Soro, Cornelius Bundrage and Miguel Cotto.

What’s going to be interesting to see for Canelo’s December 10 fight on HBO is whether he’ll be defending the WBO junior middleweight title he’s won off Liam Smith or if he’ll vacate the strap and start fighting at middleweight in catch-weight fights once again like he’s been doing for the last two years of his career. Canelo is supposedly slowly building himself up to fight at the full weight at middleweight at 160; at least that was one of the excuses used for why he couldn’t fight IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin at this time.

If Canelo chooses to defend the WBO 154lb title, then that gives you a pretty good indication that his promoters at Golden Boy weren’t serious when they said the fight against Golovkin will take place in the fall of 2017. If they are truly serious about wanting to make that fight happen, then they would be staying at middleweight and increasing the weight of the catch-weights that Canelo depends on for his fights in that weight class. Instead of fighting at 155, Canelo should be looking to fight at 157 if he’s afraid to fight at the full weight for the division at 160. Unfortunately, that’s not what he’s doing. Canelo is moving down to 154 for his September 17th fight against Smith, and facing the weakest of the champions in that division.

The reason why Canelo is fighting on regular HBO for his December 10 fight instead of on pay-per-view is because of a deal that HBO has with him and Golden Boy that he would mix in fights on regular HBO and not just fight on PPV each time. You could understand why that would be important for HBO to have a deal like that, because it gives them the chance of increasing their subscribers if Canelo fights on regular HBO every so often. Ideally, it would be great for HBO if Canelo fought on regular HBO frequently because that would really help them out. It would also help Canelo increase his fan base because he would be seen by a lot more casual boxing fans, who haven’t been exposed to his fights due to many of them now being on HBO PPV.

Surprisingly, Canelo’s fight against Liam Smith will be on HBO pay-per-view despite Smith being an unknown commodity to the American fans. He’s never fought in the U.S before, and he’s not even popular in his home country of England. It’s too bad Golden Boy opted to make the Canelo-Smith fight a pay-per-view event.

Perhaps the major reason why Canelo vs. Smith is being sold on PPV is because of the date for the fight. The fight is taking place during the Mexican Independence Day holiday weekend on September 17. There will be a lot of Mexican fans celebrating the holiday, and many of them will want to watch boxing. Canelo can take advantage of the holiday by having his fight against Smith as a PPV event. It’s just unfortunate that Canelo isn’t fighting a PPV worthy opponent like Cotto, Demetrius Andrade, Golovkin, Julian Williams, Erislandy Lara or one of the Charlo brothers.

The price tag for the Canelo-Smith fight will be around $70, according to Rafael. That’s a lot of money for a fight that figures to be a mismatch. You can’t count Smith out entirely, as he is a world champion, but it doesn’t look good for him. With Smith not being well known and highly thought of, it might have be better if Golden Boy and HBO drops the price tag for the fight to around $10 to $15, so that the fans can get a good deal. With the less expensive price tag to reflect Canelo’s opponent on that date, he might wind up getting many more PPV buys for this fight than he otherwise would have. It’s not realistic that Canelo and Golden Boy will drop the price from $70 to $10. I think that price is going to stay right where it is.