By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions may have to do some persuading of WBC president Jose Sulaiman so that their fighter WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez can bypass the winner of this Saturday night’s WBC junior middleweight eliminator bout between Erislady Lara vs. Vanes Martirosyan because Sulaiman wants Alvarez to fight the winner of that fight next, not the fight that Alvarez is looking to get the next time he steps inside the ring on May 5th.
The World Boxing Council website at wbcboxing.com is reporting that Sulaiman wants Canelo to fight the WBC mandatory challenger next. This obviously isn’t good news for Golden Boy or Canelo because he was hoping to fight one of three opponents on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo on May 5th next year: Floyd Mayweather Jr, Miguel Cotto or Sergio Martinez.
If Canelo is forced to fight Lara or Martirosyan then there will be some risk involved because Canelo hasn’t looked unbeatable in any of his fights, and Golden Boy has matched him with very weak opposition though pretty much his entire career.
We’ve seen Alvarez recently facing 40-year-old Shane Mosley and a light welterweight in Josesito Lopez. Alvarez beat both of them but you have to wonder why is Alvarez fighting a 40-year-old Mosley when he’d already been easily beaten by Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao recently, and been given a controversial draw in a fight where he appeared to lose to Sergio Mora. Then Alvarez fights a light welterweight in Lopez. It doesn’t make sense for a world champion to fighting old guys or light welterweights. Those are the type of fights that Alvarez should have taken before he was the WBC 154 pound champion, not after.
It’s going to be interesting to see what Golden Boy will do in order to keep Alvarez from having to fight Martirosyan or Lara, because those guys could wreck Alvarez’s and Golden Boy’s plans by beating Alvarez before he’s brought in the big money in a fight against Mayweather, Cotto or Sergio Martinez.
Alvarez wants to go straight to the top before having to prove himself against guys that can really fight, and it’s disappointing when you see that kind of thing because he looks like he’s cutting corners. Look at the guys that Alvarez has fought in the past two years and ask yourself where is the quality: Ryan Rhodes, Matthew Hatton, 40-year-old Shane Mosley, light welterweight Josesito Lopez, Kermit Cintron, and welterweight Alfonso Gomez.
I’d be very surprised if the WBC forces Alvarez to fight his mandatory. I can see Golden Boy smoothing things over with the WBC so that Alvarez can skip the mandatory challenger for all of 2013, and possibly 2014, depending on how big named opponents Golden Boy can keep lining up for Alvarez to take.
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