By Dan Ambrose: With former WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) announcing last week that he plans on fighting three times in 2014 with all of the fights being pay-per-view bouts, it’s put a ton of pressure on Canelo, his team and Golden Boy Promotions to try and dig up three big names for him to fight in order for his PPV cards to be a success.
The problem Canelo has is it’s going to be tough for Golden Boy to find him three big names in one year.
We’re already hearing talk about Canelo’s first PPV bout on March 8th coming against IBF junior middleweight champion Carlos Molina, and if that’s the case then it’s doubtful that the card will attract more than 100,000 PPV buys if that. Molina is not a big name and not even close to being a big name. Canelo might as well have Golden Boy set up a fight against the recently knocked out Delvin Rodriguez because that would be about the same fight in terms of fan interest. I’m not sure that Carlos Molina would attract much of an audience even if he were to be headlining an ESPN2 fight card against someone.
Canelo’s adviser Jose Reynoso told The Record “The commitments with the PPV events as far as rivals go have to be first class. They have to be big names…We have to see what competitors are available for these dates.”
Canelo’s three PPV dates will be on March 8th, July 26th and November 22nd.
The obvious names for Canelo are Miguel Cotto and Sergio Martinez. Canelo will be lucky if he can Sergio and Cotto to both agree to fight him in 2014. I wouldn’t be surprised if both fights fail to happen. If they can get both Sergio and Cotto, then they only have to worry about trying to find someone decent for one of the dates. Molina isn’t the guy, and neither is Victor Ortiz. He’s probably going to get one of the dates against Canelo, which is pretty sad because Ortiz won’t have redeemed himself from his back to back losses to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Josesito Lopez, and he’ll be seen a sacrificial lamb by a lot of fans. Ortiz is fighting on December 14th, but Golden Boy doesn’t seem like they’re going out of their way to find a top quality guy for him to fight. Ortiz was supposed to fight Alfonso Gomez, but he fell down and suffered an injury this week and can’t make the fight. That wouldn’t have been the big name that Ortiz needed to make fans forget how poor he looked against Josesito and Mayweather.
There probably isn’t going to be three big names for Canelo next year in his three PPV fights. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t even get one big name. I think the likely names for Canelo’s three PPV bouts will be as follows: Carlos Molina, Victor Ortiz and Robert Guerrero. Forget about Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout, Mayweather, Cotto, Sergio Martinez and Gennady Golovkin.
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