By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya says that his fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) will still fight on May 2nd no matter who his opponent is. If he can’t get a fight against WBC middleweight title holder Miguel Cotto, then Canelo will still be fighting on May 2nd against whoever De La Hoya can dig up for him.
What De La Hoya isn’t saying is whether Canelo’s fight will be on HBO pay-per-view or not or just regular HBO. If Floyd Mayweather Jr faces someone good like Manny Pacquiao, or even a halfway decent opponent, then it’s going to be next to impossible for Canelo to bump Mayweather from the May 2nd date.
He can’t drag out an Alfredo Angulo type opponent and expect that fight to be given the green light for pay-per-view by HBO if Mayweather still intends on fighting on the same date.
Canelo will have to fight on regular HBO, and that obviously isn’t what he has in mind. It doesn’t help him nearly as much if he fights on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo if the fight isn’t going to be pay-per-view.
“Regardless of who Canelo fights, he is going on May 2,” De La Hoya said to RingTV.com.
With Canelo still insisting that he’s going to take the May 2nd date that Mayweather has already said he wants, it’s going to put the final decision on whose fight winds up on pay-per-view in the hands of the cable providers. If they feel that Mayweather’s fight will bring in more money then they’ll select that fight for pay-per-view.
Canelo will then need to decide whether it’s a bright move on his part to stick to his guns and still fight on the May 2nd date without being able to cash in on the large Mexican fan base that will be celebrating the Cinco de Mayo holiday. It doesn’t seem like it would be a smart move by Canelo to fight on regular HBO if he’s not going to be able to take advantage of the Mexican fans celebrating the holiday.
The wiser move would be for Canelo to move his fight to June so that he can have the fight date all by himself without him competing against the more popular Mayweather. Canelo is in a bind with his hard stance in wanting to compete with Mayweather for both of the Mexican holidays in 2015.
Canelo may be a huge star in Mexico, but in the United States, he’s far behind Mayweather. So he doesn’t really come out ahead if he tries to compete against Mayweather, because he doesn’t have the popularity yet to make that kind of move. In the future it’s possible that Canelo will be able to boot any other fighter off the Mexican holidays, but that remains to be seen.
Canelo didn’t help himself any in his three biggest fights of his career [Austin Trout, Mayweather and Erislandy Lara] that were televised in the United States. Canelo appeared to lose all three of the fights in the eyes of many boxing fans, and that’s obviously not how you become a huge star on pay-per-view.
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