By Dan Ambrose: Showtime head of Sports Stephen Espinosa is optimistic that a mega pay per fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez can get made for September 14th on Showtime/CBS on the Mexican Independence Day holiday. Both Mayweather and Canelo are interested in the fight, so all that needs to take place in the negotiations for money, weight.
Espinosa said to ESPN’s Dan Rafael “I’m cautiously optimistic. There’s a lot of negotiating left to do, but often the biggest hurdle is convincing one fighter or the other to take the fight. That hurdle has been cleared. I truly believe Mayweather wants Canelo and that Canelo wants Mayweather, and that’s half the battle.”
Well there’s a lot more to it than that I’m afraid. There’s the problem of trying to find enough money so that Mayweather gets his $32 million and Canelo gets what will likely be at least $10 million. Will the fight draw enough fans for both guys to get that kind of loot? I’m not sure that it will because Canelo’s popularity is still mostly limited to his Mexican fans in the U.S right now.
He’s not a huge crossover star like Oscar De Hoya yet, and it’s unclear if he ever will because Golden Boy has been so careful about the types of opponents they’ve matched him against. There’s also the problem of Canelo not looking spectacular in winning a controversial 12 round decision in his last fight against Austin Trout last April at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
A lot of boxing fans thought Canelo lost that fight, and the ones who thought he won saw it as a very, very close fight. It was so close that Canelo really should give Trout a rematch so that the fight could be settled once and for all without open scoring and not in Texas. There won’t be a rematch. Canelo is happy with his controversial win and moving on.
Besides the money issue, there’s the weight problem. Canelo out-weighs Mayweather by close to 25 pounds. How are the two guys going to fight with Canelo effectively being a light heavyweight at 172 lbs. when he steps inside the ring and Mayweather a tiny junior middleweight at 150 lbs? I’m talking about after the two fighters rehydrate.
If the fight were to take place at junior middleweight, Mayweather wouldn’t make the upper limit of the division, whereas Canelo would likely barely make the 154 and then balloon up to 172 to 175. How is Espinosa and Golden Boy Promotions going to work out the huge weight differences between the two fighters with Canelo out-weighing Mayweather by 25 pounds?
Mayweather has fought twice at 154 in his career against Oscar De La Hoya and Miguel Cotto, and he’s struggled both times he’s done it. Those were very hard fights for Mayweather because he’s basically still a lightweight who fights at welterweight.
You’ve got lightweights like Ricky Burns and Adrien Broner who rehydrate to 147 where Mayweather is at. With Canelo, rehydrates to 172. So we’re talking a huge, huge difference in size between Mayweather and Canelo and unless they can come to an agreement on the weight, I don’t see the fight getting made even with Espinosa being optimistic.
Comments are closed.