By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) is stubbornly committed to fighting on September 14th with or without Floyd Mayweather Jr. Canelo says September 14th, which is the Mexican Independence day, is his date and he’s not moving off of it.
That sounds all well and good except that if his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions aren’t able to set up a pay per view fight between him and Mayweather for September 14th, Canelo will find himself competing with Mayweather’s own PPV fight on that night. That’s just not going to happen.
If Canelo wants his first PPV fight to take place he’s going to have to pick another date because his fight won’t draw good numbers if he competes with Mayweather on the same date. Besides that, who would televise the fight? HBO?
Canelo fights on Showtime, and they’re not going to show dual PPV fights on the same day, even if they took place at different times in the day. Showtime isn’t going to do that.
A Mayweather-Canelo fight could take place if Canelo would just agree to melt down to 147 to make the fight happen because Mayweather isn’t going to move back up to 154 any longer, not after his bad experience in his fight with Miguel Cotto. He learned from that fight that he doesn’t have the size to be fighting guys in their mid-160s. With Canelo, he came into his last fight at 172.
Mayweather isn’t going to be fighting someone that rehydrates up that much in weight. Canelo doesn’t have the experience or the clout to put the muscle on Mayweather and pressure him to fight him at 154. Canelo has to do what younger fighters do and that’s let the bigger star have his way by fighting at 147.
If Canelo wants the payday he’s going to have to do it. Canelo needs this fight to become the star he wants to be, so he’s going to have to take off some of that 172 and get down to 147. If he doesn’t want to do that then the fight isn’t going to happen, it’s as simple as that.
I just hope Golden Boy isn’t stuck with two fights on the same night on September 14th with Mayweather hogging all the numbers while Canelo’s fight does poorly because of him making the mistake of going up against Mayweather’s fight.
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