By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions has done a great job of matchmaking with their fighter WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez 40-0-1, 29 KO’s), matching him against old and smaller guys as he was coming up, and then continuing with the soft matchmaking even in having him pick up a paper title against a welterweight fighter in Matthew Hatton last year. We’re not taking junior middleweight here, we’re talking welterweight.
The soft matchmaking his continued even with Alvarez holding down the World Boxing Council 154 pound belt. He’s been matched against Kermit Cintron, Ryan Rhodes, Alfonso Gomez and Shane Mosley. This is in contrast with the guys that he should have fought in Erislandy Lara, Vanes Martirosyan, Demetrius Andrade, and Carlos Molina.
Alvarez is now facing Josesito Lopez (30-4, 18 KO’s) on September 15th. Lopez only recently moved up to welterweight from the light welterweight division in his last fight against Victor Ortiz. Interestingly enough, the WBC now has Lopez ranked #4 at 154, as if to give Alvarez cover for fighting him.
This fight obviously has been with the idea of keeping Alvarez unbeaten and the the WBC champion. However, I think it’s going to backfire on Golden Boy with Lopez pulling off a huge upset by beating the flat-footed, plodding Alvarez.
It won’t be a big shock to me, though, because I can see that Alvarez is slow on his feet, easy to hit and not nearly as his record would have you believe. He’s beaten nobody and looked terrible in many of his fights when he’s had to deal with movement or a fighter that throws a lot of punches. Lopez can do both, and he might just make Alvarez look bad by beating him and exposing all of his faults.
Alvarez looked clearly frustrated in his last fight against Mosley when he couldn’t take him out. Alvarez, not used to fighting at a fast pace, seemed almost angry that Mosley was pushing him to fight the full three minutes of each round at a quick pace instead of Alvarez being able to throw slow shots, wasting a lot of time between his next punch.
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