By Dan Ambrose: Fight negotiations between former welterweight champion Paul Williams (41-2, 27 KO’s) and WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) have reportedly sped up for a September 15th fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions told RingTV “I met with Al Haymon yesterday, and we met with Canelo on Monday, so I’m trying to put that together. That would certainly be a big fight for September 15th.”
If the 30-year-old Williams is eliminated for the Alvarez bout then it’ll likely be Golden Boy Promotions fighter James Kirkland that gets the call. However, the fact that they’re looking at the light punching easy to hit Williams suggests that there’s some worry about how well Alvarez will do against the big punching pressure fighter Kirkland.
That would be a huge jump up for Alvarez, because he didn’t look all that impressive against 40-year-old Shane Mosley in his 12 round decision win on May 5th. Alvarez faded late in the fight and seemed to have difficulties with the pressure that Mosley was putting on him. The good thing for Alvarez was that Mosley didn’t have the size or the strength to really trouble Alvarez in a big way, but he still exposed Alvarez in that fight. Golden Boy is going to need to work on these areas in Alvarez’s game if he’s going to be a great fighter like they think he’ll be. I don’t see him being great or anything close to that. Alvarez will do well as long as he’s carefully matched, but as soon as he’s put in with someone not 40-years-old and shot, he could have major problems.
Alvarez, 21, badly needs a relevant – non-shot – scalp on his resume after having faced pretty much either old fighters or weak-punching fighters as of late and Williams will give him that chance.
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