By Dan Ambrose: The match-up between former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) and James Kirkland (32-1, 28 KOs), which had previously been scheduled for May 2nd, has been moved to May 9th, according to Steve Kim.
Golden Boy Promotions matchmaker Eric Gomez reported that the Canelo-Kirkland fight will be moved to May 9th. The fight will be televised by HBO from the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. Golden Boy president Oscar De La Hoya is predicting a record breaking crowd of 60,000 fans for the fight. That’s a great number.
Having a crowd big would further validate the 24-year-old red-headed Canelo as a tremendous ticket seller in the boxing world. Canelo may not be the best fighter in the junior middleweight division, but he can at least sell tickets and bring in high ratings.
“Canelo-Kirkland now goes officially to May 9th according to Eric Gomez of GBP…. #boxing,” Steve Kim said on his twitter.
Canelo had to move from the May 2nd fight date, because if he’d stayed on the date, he would have had to fight on the Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Manny Pacquiao undercard as part of a split site broadcast. That in turn would have helped make the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight card even bigger than it will already be.
It’s not surprising that Canelo isn’t interested in fighting on that date, because he would have had to be second fiddle to Mayweather and Pacquiao.
At this point, Canelo sees himself as a headliner type fighter despite the fact that he was soundly beaten by Mayweather in 2013, and has a recent controversial victory over Erislandy Lara.
Canelo had previously insisted on fighting on May 2nd, as it’s the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo. Canelo feels that a Mexican fighter should be fighting on the Mexican holidays rather than Mayweather. However, this is the United States where the boxing fights will be televised and taking place, and Mayweather obviously doesn’t feel the need to avoid fighting on a specific dates on the calendar just because those dates are important for someone from another country.
For that reason, Canelo, if he wants to try and take the next Mexican holiday in September, he’s going to need to pick out someone popular enough to dissuade Mayweather from wanting to fight on that date.
Given that Canelo’s fight in September will be a pay-per-view bout, he’s going to need an awfully good opponent to get Mayweather to move off that date. My guess is it’s going to take someone like Gennady Golovkin or Miguel Cotto to bump Mayweather from the Mexican holiday in September.
Canelo can’t keep picking overweight fighters like James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo and assume that Mayweather will move. Canelo also won’t be able to push Mayweather off the date by fighting 38-year-old Joshua Clottey. He’s the fighter that Canelo was briefly scheduled to fight last December before Canelo suffered an ankle injury and had to pull out of the fight.
Kirkland is reportedly almost 50 pounds overweight for the Canelo fight, so he’s got a lot of weight that he needs to melt off before he can make the 155 pound limit. Kirkland hasn’t fought in almost a year and a half since 2013, and the chances are high that he’s going to be rusty, weak and possibly flabby looking when he gets inside the ring with Canelo on May 9th.
You have to commend Golden Boy president De La Hoya for picking out Kirkland because by choosing him, De La Hoya is increasing Canelo’s chances of winning the fight and looking good in he process.
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