By Dan Ambrose: The 23-year-old inexperienced WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KO’s) decided to play a bit of psychological gamesmanship with the kind of boxing Floyd Mayweather Jr. (44-0, 26 KO’s) during Thursday weigh-in by refusing Mayweather’s request for him to hold one side of the newly created supposedly pure gold WBC 154 lb. title strap so that the 12,200 fans that attended the weigh-in could snap pictures.
Mayweather politely offered Canelo to hold up one side of the belt and instead of doing so, the red-haired fighter stubbornly refused his request. It was pretty sad that Canelo would use this as the time where he would play tough guy, because it was the fans that lost out and of course the WBC. They didn’t get both guys holding up their new gold strap. It made Canelo look more than a little childish.
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer told RingTV “Canelo was like, ‘I’m not going to do what he’s telling me to do.’ I was right there, and Canelo told me that himself. Floyd was like, ‘What’s wrong with him? He doesn’t want to hold the belt?’ I was like, ‘What do you want me to do? He doesn’t want to hold the belt.’”
This was so silly. Mayweather should have stopped playing nice guy as soon as Canelo refused his cordial offer, but it was so sudden that Mayweather wasn’t expecting him to snub his offer.
Mayweather needs to realize that he’s dealing with a guy that badly wants to win tomorrow night, and he’s going to try to do anything he can to win this fight. Mayweather has to be ready for more tricks in the ring, because Canelo has a huge ego built from winning fights for 8 years against the likes of Matthew Hatton, Alfonso Gomez, Kermit Cintron and other similar fighters. Mayweather just needs to put on his game face now and offer no more kind gestures.
The last thing that Mayweather needs to be is nice against someone that is trying to build himself up as a star. Canelo is incredibly ambitious and he needs the win over Mayweather to bring him to the top. It doesn’t matter that Canelo should be fighting guys his own size instead of being matched against welterweights. He wants Mayweather’s scalp on Saturday night, and Mayweather has to put Canelo in his place and expose him the way that Austin Trout was doing last April.
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