By Dan Ambrose: Former two-division world champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) says he’s not sure when he’ll be making his move up in weight to the middleweight division. He says he’ll wait until his body tells him to make the move. What this means is that Canelo could opt to stay at 154 longer than people thought he would.
Canelo surprised boxing fans recently when he chose to move off his self-created 155lb division to sign for a title fight against WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs) for a fight on September 17 at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Last Wednesday, Canelo surprised the fans a second time by saying he’s not sure when he’ll move up to the 160lb division to begin campaigning as a middleweight. Boxing fans want Canelo to fight unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in 2017.
“Not too long. Time will tell,” said Canelo when asked when he’ll move up to 160. “My body will tell me. Once my body feels that I need to move up, then I’ll move up. Right now, I feel good but time will tell when it’s eventually time to move up,” said Canelo.
Gracias Londres y #TEAMCANELO 🇲🇽 #MiEra pic.twitter.com/H16IVmJNMY
— Canelo Alvarez (@Canelo) July 20, 2016
This doesn’t sound too promising. If Canelo is going to drag his feet about moving up to middleweight, then his fight against Golovkin could be stretched out into 2018 instead of the fight taking place next year. Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy don’t have a written agreement with Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler that they’ll be fighting Triple G in 2017, so they can put the fight off as long as they wish.
If Canelo is going to wait until his body tells him it’s time to move up to middleweight, then we could be waiting for a long, long time. It’s hard to imagine Canelo being able to stay at 154 for any length of time given that he’s blowing up to the mid-170s for his fights.
We don’t even know what Canelo weighs for his fights nowadays because he wasn’t weighed before he stepped into the ring for his last fight. It’s quite possible that Canelo won’t be weighed any longer before he fights. So it’s possible that he could be weighing in the 180s now, as trainer Freddie Roach says.