Merchant shocked that 40-year-old Mosley being considered for Saul Alvarez’s next opponent

By Boxing News - 12/22/2011 - Comments

Image: Merchant shocked that 40-year-old Mosley being considered for Saul Alvarez's next opponentBy Dan Ambrose: HBO analyst Larry Merchant isn’t pleased that WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez may end up facing 40-year-old Shane Mosley next rather than a more deserving top contender in the division such as James Kirkland.

Although Kirkland and Mosley are main two names that are under consideration for Alvarez’s next fight, Merchant finds it off putting to even consider Mosley as the one that eventually gets picked.

Merchant told examiner.com “I am surprised to see his [Mosley] name mentioned for Alvarez because it doesn’t pass the smell test, especially since he left Golden Boy to fight Pacquiao…My attitude about him is the way it is about other once top fighters who keep going. It’s their fight to keep going and it’s my right to not to want to see them.”

I don’t know if Merchant just woke up from a year-long sleep or what, because if he had been paying any kind of careful attention to the 21-year-old Alvarez’s career he would have seen that the 40-year-old Mosley is par for the course for Alvarez. He’s the kind of fighter that Alvarez has been fighting for the past couple of years and he actually might even be a step up for Alvarez and that’s kind of sad.

Here are the fighters Alvarez has fought since May 2010:

Jose Miguel Cotto
Luciano Leonel Cuello
Carlos Baldomir
Lovemore N’Dou
Matthew Hatton
Ryan Rhodes
Alfonso Gomez
Kermit Cintron

Mosley fits in nicely with that bunch I must say. The other guy they are supposedly considering, James Kirkland, would stick out like a sore thumb from this group because he can actually still fight.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Kirkland won’t likely get chosen for Alvarez’s next fight or the one or the one after that. Alvarez seems to be on soft diet until he eventually gets a big money fight against one of the stars in the sport. Will he be ready when that time comes? Probably not.

Merchant would much rather see Alvarez face Kirkland, as would the rest of the boxing world. But it’s not going to happen, not in a million years.



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