By Dan Ambrose: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) still insists that he’ll be fighting on May 2nd and in September of next year despite the fact that Floyd Mayweather Jr has already said that he plans on fighting on those dates next year.
Canelo wants to fight on the Mexican holidays in May and September, and he sees it as a case of him wanting to take the dates due to him being Mexican. However, it might end up biting Canelo in the backside if he does try and compete with the popular Mayweather because it’ll mean that Canelo’s pay-per-view numbers for those months will likely wind up much smaller than they would be if he were to fight on another date.
The problem is Mayweather is the far bigger pay-per-view attraction than Canelo, and it means that if boxing fans have to pick between Mayweather and Canelo for their fights in May and September, most of the fans will opt to purchase Mayweather’s fights especially if he facing the likes of Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan.
“Everybody knows that Oscar is getting me May 2 and September,” Canelo said via RingTV.com. “Those are the Mexican holidays, and they belong to the Mexican fighters. Everybody knows those are the Mexican holidays and the traditional dates for the Mexican fighters.”
Anyone is free to fight on the Mexican holidays. I’m not sure that Canelo is aware of that. If Mayweather wants those dates, it doesn’t matter if he’s not Mexican. He can fight on them and he likely will.
Canelo could wind up hurting himself if he tries competing against Mayweather for both of the Mexican holiday fight dates next year, because Canelo doesn’t have the fan base in the United States to bring in nearly the same amount of pay-per-view buys as Mayweather.
We’ve seen that with Canelo bringing in a little over 300,000 PPV buys for his fights against Alfredo Angulo and Erislandy Lara. Canelo was the A-side in both of those fights, yet he couldn’t even break 500,000 buys.
The smartest thing for Canelo to do is to back off and let Mayweather have the dates that he wants next year, and then when Mayweather retires, Canelo can claim them for his own.
De La Hoya thinks Canelo will be the biggest star in the sport for the next 10 years. I’m not sure if that’s going to be the case. Canelo was beaten by Mayweather soundly last year in September, and in his last fight in July, Canelo was arguably beaten Erislandy Lara.
Canelo won the fight by a 12 round split decision, but it appeared that he was beaten by Lara. Lara beat his last opponent Ishe Smith in the same manner he did Canelo.
The only difference is the judges gave Lara the victory over Smith, who is nowhere near as popular as Canelo. If Canelo can’t even decisively beat a fighter like Lara without controversy, then it’s highly unlikely that Canelo will be boxing’s biggest star for an entire decade like De La Hoya thinks he’ll be.
There are constantly new fighters emerging that will likely give Canelo fits if De La Hoya is willing to match him against them. It’s kind of telling that De La Hoya didn’t want to match Canelo against either Austin Trout or Lara.
That tells me that De La Hoya is going to be very selective in the guys the matches Canelo against. I’d be very, very surprised if De La Hoya gives the green light to a Canelo vs. Gennady Golovkin fight if Canelo can somehow get past Miguel Cotto next year. I think it goes without saying that Lara will never get another chance against Canelo.
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