By Dan Ambrose: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0, 30 KO’s) has been confirmed to be fighting on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. HBO televised pay per view card on May 4th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Canelo still doesn’t have an opponent for that date but Golden Boy Promotions are looking at Austin Trout, James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo to face him. It would be a huge surprise if Canelo ends up facing Trout. It’s not likely to happen because Trout is too good and brings a lot of the same ability to the ring that Floyd Mayweather Jr. would bring if he were to fight Canelo. I don’t think Trout is as Mayweather, but he’s like a Mayweather-lite in my estimation and that’s probably more than good enough to beat the flat-footed, stamina plagued Canelo.
Angulo would appear to be the leading candidate to get the fight with Canelo due to him being a Golden Boy fighter, and not being nearly as difficult for the flat-footed Canelo to beat as the 27-year-old Trout. Angulo is coming off of a really poor performance against Jorge Silva last month in winning a 10 round decision.
That was supposed to be an easy fight for Angulo, as Golden Boy picked out a welterweight for him to fight, but Angulo ended up taking a lot of punishment in winning the fight by a 10 round decision. But more importantly, Silva exposed the fact that Angulo has made almost zero improvement since being stopped by Kirkland in the 6th round in November 2011.
Kirkland hasn’t fought since early last year when he tore up his right shoulder in an unimpressive 10th round disqualification win over Carlos Molina in March of 2012. It would be very strange to see Kirkland as getting the fight with Alvarez because Kirkland will have been out of the ring for 14 months by the time the May 4th fight date takes place and that’s a long time for a fighter to be out of the ring.
One would hope that Golden Boy doesn’t pick a fighter as inactive as Kirkland for Canelo since that would just affirm in the minds of many boxing fans that Canelo is being protected from the better fighter in the division. Kirkland would be better off fighting Molina again to prove he can beat him without controversy. Golden Boy probably won’t ever but Kirkland back in with Molina, however, because one gets the sense that Kirkland was supposed to have won the fight with ease and Molina clearly exposed him.
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