(Photo credit: Naoki Fakuda) By Dan Ambrose: At Saturday’s post-fight press conference following his gem of a 12 round unanimous decision victory over Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (31-2-1, 18 KO’s) in Las Vegas, Nevada, WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) shutdown talk of him stepping up in weight to face the heavier and younger WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) by saying he’s going to meet with his team plus his father Floyd Mayweather Sr. to decide on what’s the best direction to take for his September 14th fight in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mayweather said “I’m not going to duck or dodge anyone, but I’m at the pinnacle of my sport and I’ve earned my stripes. I worked hard for 17 years to get to this point and I’m not going to rush.”
In addition to that, Mayweather went on to say that Canelo’s recent win over Austin Trout in San Antonio, Texas was a lot closer than what the three judges scored it for him.
Mayweather didn’t fully elaborate on what he was driving at by mentioning this, but it seemed that he was trying to say that Canelo still has unfinished business with Trout that he needs to be taking care of before he tries to take on boxing’s #1 fighter.
Mayweather isn’t going to duck Canelo, but he also probably isn’t going to agree to fight someone that out-weighs him by 25 pounds either. If Canelo’s fans want to see that as Mayweather ducking Canelo then that’s on them, but the last time I checked, Canelo wasn’t accepting the challenges of WBA middleweight champion Genneday Golovkin either, and he comes into his middleweight fights weighing less than what Canelo weighed for his fight against Austin Trout.
Canelo hasn’t shown any interest in facing Golovkin, and he’s not talked about wanting to fight guys heavier than him like the light heavyweights and the cruiserweights, who would have just as much of a weight advantage over him as he would have over Mayweather.
It’s about fairness. Some boxing fans want Mayweather to fight a guy that’s 25 pounds heavier than him in Canelo, but these same fans are not pressuring Canelo to fight guys that are 25 pounds heavier than himself. Why is that? Does Canelo have to get a huge weight advantage to beat Mayweather? If he wants the fight then he should agree to a rehydration limit of 150 tops. If he can’t handle that then he shouldn’t get the fight.
I expect that Mayweather will decide on facing an actual welterweight for his next fight and his fights after that instead of taking on the much heavier Canelo, who arguably should be fighting at middleweight or super middleweight at this point. If you’re rehydrating 18 pounds from 154 to 172, then you really need to be fighting at 160.
That’s got to be really hard on Canelo’s body to take off all that water weight, and why does he need to do that when he can fight the likes of Golovkin and Peter Quillin at 160 or Andre Ward, Mikkel Kessler and Carl Froch at 168.
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