By Dan Ambrose: It looks like WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez isn’t going to be given an exception by the World Boxing Council to be their only fighter to hold more than one title at the same time.
Canelo recently captured the WBA junior middleweight title over Austin Trout last April in their fight that the WBC used open scoring for in San Antonio, Texas. Canelo thought he could keep both belts, and perhaps didn’t realize that the WBC doesn’t let their champions hold other title straps.
He was hoping that the WBC would allow him to keep his, but it would put the WBC in a position where they would look potentially bad if they’re allowing one of their fighters to hold multiple titles in the same weight class while saying no to others.
Sulaiman said this today about Canelo still having the WBA title as quoted by Fightnews.com: “If he wants to go, no problem, but he has to decide which organization he’ll stay [with].”
What Sulaiman didn’t do is give Canelo a time limit, which is something he should have touched on in the interview because if he doesn’t give Canelo a deadline for making a decision, it’s possible in theory that Canelo could drag it out into his other fights and march into the ring with Team Canelo holding both belts in the air.
This is going to be a good test to see if Sulaiman is really willing to strip Canelo of his WBC title if he fails to drop the WBA title or if he’s just making lip service to give the appearance that he wants Canelo to drop the other title so that other champions who have had to drop one of their titles by a request from the WBC won’t feel like Sulaiman is making a special exception for Canelo.
Comments are closed.