Canelo wants rematch with Mayweather

By Boxing News - 09/15/2017 - Comments

Image: Canelo wants rematch with Mayweather

By Chris Williams: Saul Canelo Alvarez is interested in facing Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a rematch if he gets by middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin this Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Canelo lost to Mayweather by a 12 round majority decision on September 14, 2013. The scores were 116-112, 117-111 and 114-114. Canelo was only 23 at the time he lost the fight to Mayweather.
The 40-year-old Mayweather recently beat UFC fighter Conor McGregor by a 10th round knockout on August 26 at the T-Mobile Arena.

Mayweather said that he’s retiring from boxing after the fight. However, Adrien Broner, a good friend of Mayweather, said that he thinks he’ll make a comeback to fight a rematch with Canelo in order to pick up another $300 million payday.

Canelo said this to the mirror.co.uk about wanting to face Mayweather again:

“It would be good. That is a thorn I have and I would like to take that thorn out. But it is not an obsession. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, that is OK, too. Was I too young? Most definitely. It showed but what I won out of that was the experience. I learned a lot from that fight. I don’t take it today as a defeat, I take it as an experience. I learned a lot in that fight.”

Caenlo has gotten a lot better since his loss to Mayweather, and the weight difference between the two of them might preclude the two of them facing each other. Mayweather is able to fight at 154, but Canelo is now a very heavy looking middleweight, who may come into the ring this Saturday night in the 180s. If Mayweather is only weighing in the low 150s, he could have a lot of problems with Canelo weighing nearly 30 lbs. heavier than him. That’s a huge weight advantage.

Mayweather picked up his 50th consecutive win in beating McGregor, 29, last month to break Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record. Another win for Mayweather would break his own record and put him at 51-0. Mayweather made over $300 million for the McGregor fight. For him to want to come back and fight Canelo, it’s likely that Mayweather would insist on getting similar money.

Mayweather looked pretty old and slow in his win over McGregor. He appears to have lost a couple of steps since his win over Andre Berto in September 2015. Unless Mayweather can come back to the level he was at for the Berto fight, he could be in trouble against Canelo right now.

”If Canelo can win this, Floyd can cash another $300, $350 million,” said Broner about Canelo’s fight against Golovkin. ”[Fighting Canelo is] Very dangerous, but [Floyd] is still sharper. It will be the same fight [as it was in 2013].”