By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Virgil Hunter believes that former WBA/WBC junior Saul “Canelo” Alvarez wouldn’t be in the position to carry the sport if he didn’t have Mexico behind him to help support him in large numbers.
It’s unclear whether Hunter thinks Canelo would be just another good fighter without his large following or if he thinks he’s a real talent. Without Canelo’s large following in Mexico, it’d hard not to picture him as being in the same boat as other victims of Floyd Mayweather Jr. such as Robert Guerrero after he was soundly beaten by him.
Hunter told RingTV “He’s [Canelo] got a country behind him. If he didn’t have a country behind him, they wouldn’t be saying that [he can carry the sport into the next decade]…Any fighter with a country behind him will be able to help carry the sport.”
It’s going to be a real test of how long Canelo can keep an entire country behind him if he starts taking more losses against the likes of Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout or Gennady Golovkin. Will boxing fans in Mexico still support the red-haired Canelo if he starts taking defeats against those guys or will the fans simply not care and continue to worship Canelo no matter how many losses he has.
Of course, Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy can make sure that he doesn’t suffer losses by opting not to put him in with Trout, Golovkin or Lara. They could simply keep matching Canelo against welterweights instead of guys from his own division and that in turn will give Canelo a good chance to start winning again and carry the sport into the next decade.
If Canelo is fighting welterweights instead of junior middleweights from his own division or better yet middleweights, that could make Canelo the equivalent of fool’s gold for fans. But it’s all about how a fighter is perceived by the casual boxing fans rather than the hardcore fans because there are many more casual fans than the hardcore variety, and the casual fans in many cases don’t have a clue that Canelo doesn’t fight in the welterweight division, and they won’t care if he keeps fighting welterweights the remainder of his career while campaigning as a junior middleweight.
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