By Jason Kim: Someone brought up the idea of matching unbeaten WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (39-0-1, 29 KO’s) against contender James Kirkland (30-1, 27 KO’s) to Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions on his twitter and this is what De La Hoya said in response: “I actually like the fight, and I don’t need a writer telling me to make it happen.”
That good news because it would certainly be a good thing to see Alvarez finally face a life body instead of all the stiffs that have been fed to him in the past year. Alvarez has fought a bunch of easy record-padding fights lately, and it’s no longer interesting.
It just seems like Golden Boy is afraid to match him tough for fear he’ll lose. Kirkland would be a huge step up for Alvarez, but not an unwinnable fight by any means. Kirkland was down in the 1st round in his last fight against Alfredo Angulo, and the ring is Angulo didn’t really throw many shots because he gassed out in the opening round. Had Angulo not tired from trying to score a knockout, he would have given the weak-chinned Kirkland lots of problems.
I think De La Hoya and Richard Schaefer won’t match Alvarez up against Kirkland because there are too many chances for something to go wrong for Alvarez. He’s kind of slow and not very tall. Kirkland will be all over him and he’d be forced to fight a lot harder than he’s accustomed to.
Alvarez is used to fighting slow fights, but Kirkland would force Alvarez to fight life and death just to survive and I doubt De La Hoya would want that.
Kirkland looked great in his 6th round TKO win over Angulo last month on November 5th. Kirkland was in excellent shape and did a great job of putting pressure on Angulo to force him to fight hard.
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