By Dan Ambrose: As quick as the fight between James Kirkland (31-1, 27 KO’s) and WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (40-0-1, 29 KO’s) was on for September 15th, it is now officially off because of Kirkland injuring his recently surgically repaired right shoulder.
Kirkland, 28, suffered the injury during training today, and he’s not going to be able to make the September 15th pay-per-view fight with the 21-year-old Alvarez unfortunately. It was perhaps a mistake by Golden Boy Promotions to sign up Kirkland for the fight given that he recently underwent surgery in March after he tore up his shoulder in two places in his 10th round disqualification win over Carlos Molina. When you’re talking about shoulder surgery, it’s something that required more than a couple of months of rest before a fighter can start training again.
Golden Boy Promotions obviously were needy for a well known opponent for Alvarez after Paul Williams, Alvarez’s originally scheduled opponent, was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident last Sunday in Georgia. Instead of looking for someone a little more healthy, Golden Boy decided on Kirkland in a move that seemed doomed for failure. Why choose a guy that just came off of major surgery to face Alvarez? It just seemed like a bad move and not it’s backfired on Golden Boy with Kirkland pulling out of the fight.
Kirkland was supposed to have made $3 million for the Alvarez fight, by far the biggest payday of Kirkland’s career. You know he’s got to be badly disappointed right now, because he would have made big money and would have had a chance to possibly pull off an upset against the 21-year-old Alvarez.
I doubt that Kirkland would have won, but he might have been able to take Alvarez into the deep waters and drown him. Alvarez looked exhausted in beating 40-year-old Shane Mosley last May, and didn’t seem to fight well with the little pressure that Mosley was putting on him.
It’s going to be interesting to see who Golden Boy replaces Kirkland with because this is a pay-per-view fight, not a regular bout on HBO. To ask boxing fans to pay to see Alvarez fight, Golden Boy is going to have to find a well known opponent because you can’t just throw in yet another old timer to fight Alvarez and expect boxing fans to want to pay to see it. In the past two years, Alvarez has faced three 40-year-old fighters and a handful of mediocre opponents. He’s still yet to face one fighter that I would consider a quality guy. I doubt that will change on September 15th. Look for Alvarez to be put in with another beatable guy.
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