By Dan Ambrose: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) figured he wasn’t going to help Floyd Mayweather Jr. make his May 4th fight card a huge success after Mayweather refused to sign for a September fight with him, so Canelo pulled out of the undercard and will face WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (26-0, 14 KO’s).
Was this a smart move by Canelo to pay Mayweather back pulling out of the card? No, it was actually kind of a dense move by Canelo because Mayweather is going to fight him eventually, but Canelo tried to push it, like he was the one calling the shots.
Obviously, he’s not because he’s still totally unproven after having faced pretty much exclusively weak opponents during his 8-year pro career. But by pulling out of the May 4th card and choosing to fight Trout on April 20th at the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas, USA, Canelo’s fight will receive a lot less media exposure than it would have had he simply stayed put and fought on Mayweather’s undercard.
Yahoo Sports estimates that the Canelo-Trout fight could wind up with only 1/5th of the exposure as he would have received had he stayed on the May 4th card. Was that a smart thing to do? That was a blow it move by Canelo, because he overreacted in my view after Mayweather refused to sign a contract right away to fight him in September.
Canelo needed to fight on the card, stay patient and wait because it’s not as if Mayweather has a lot of options for his six fights. He’s going to fight Canelo at some point, so trying to pressure him into the fight was a ham-handed move on Canelo’s part.
I just wonder who advised Canelo to pull out of the card because if he thought it up himself then he needs to have some advisers that can talk sense to the guy to make him realize that you don’t walk from publicity.
Being on the Mayweather-Guerrero fight card would have given Canelo a ton of visibility with casual boxing fans who have never seen the orange-haired fighter before, and if he didn’t get beaten up and humiliated by Austin Trout, then he’d have come out of the fight a much more popular fighter. But by choosing to pull out of the May 4th fight card, Canelo is going to be seen by far fewer fans, and he’ll continue to be an unknown to a lot of casual boxing fans in the U.S.
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