By Dan Ambrose: Dan Rafael of ESPN is reporting that WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) is interested in facing WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (26-0, 14 KO’s) in a unification bout on May 4th next year. This would no doubt please a lot of boxing fans who want to see Alvarez face his first quality 154 pound fighter after seeing him fight a lot of welterweights in winning and then defending his WBC title.
Rafael said “My understanding is that Canelo is pushing for Trout but we shall see.”
Canelo may have to really push hard if he wants the Trout fight because it doesn’t look like Golden Boy Promotions wants to make that fight for him. The names that Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer mentioned for Canelo are James Kirkland and Miguel Cotto. He said that Trout needs to do more to prove himself even though he’s more proven than Kirkland given his win over Cotto and the fact that he’s a world champion, something Kirkland has never accomplished.
Trout is all wrong for Alvarez because of his boxing ability, height, reach, size, and talent. He would make it really hard for Alvarez by exposing his ability to move around the ring. It would be like watching Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. get schooled a second time by Sergio Martinez, and I suspect that Golden Boy realizes this, because they don’t seem at all interesting in testing Alvarez against Trout.
Canelo may or may not want the fight with Trout, but that still doesn’t mean the fight will happen. Golden Boy ultimately will make the decision for him who he’ll fight next, and that’s probably going to be Kirkland, Cotto or maybe another old touch from the past like Richardo Mayorga. We’ve already see Alvarez face 40-year-old Lovemore Ndou, 40-year-old Carlos Baldomir, 40-year-old Shane Mosley, a past his best Kermit Cintron, light welterweight Josesito Lopez, welterweight Alfonso Gomez, and welterweight Matthew Hatton. Those are the type of opposition Golden Boy has been putting in with Canelo, and I suspect that’ll continue to be the case until they can get him a big money fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr.
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