By Dan Ambrose: In what you have to see as a bad sign for the May 2nd clash between James Kirkland and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Kirkland reportedly won’t be trained by his long-time trainer Ann Wolfe for their fight at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
According to Fight Saga, Kirkland won’t be using Wolfe for the fight for unknown reasons. Instead of Wolfe, Kirkland will be trained by Gerald Tucker.
This is obviously a controversial move because the 30-year-old Kirkland’s best fights have been with Wolfe training him. When Kirkland fought without Wolfe training him in his 2011 fight against Japan’s Nobuhiro Ishiada, after Kirkland had been released from prison on a two-year stint for a weapon’s violation, a flabby Kirkland was blasted out in one round.
It was alarming at how out of shape Kirkland looked without Wolfe training him. Not surprising, Kirkland found success after he teamed back up with Wolfe for his subsequent fights.
What’s disappointing here is out of shape Kirkland let himself get in his year off from boxing after a win over Glen Tapia a year and a half ago. Kirkland was said to be close to 200 pounds, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. That puts Kirkland in a situation where his training camp will be more of a fat farm than an actual training camp, as he’s going to need to lose all that weight in order to get down to the 155 pound limit.
Losing 45 pounds in just a little over two months is probably not possible without Kirkland losing a lot of valuable muscle weight along the way. This is why it’s highly probable that Kirkland will only be able to get down to the 170s, and he’ll then have to lose the remaining 20+ pounds by draining down by dehydrating to make weight.
The light heavyweight-sized Canelo obviously will be draining down from the 170s as well to make weight for their May 2nd fight, but the difference is that Canelo won’t be starting his training camp flabby and out of shape like Kirkland is.
So instead of Canelo having to use his training camp as a fat farm the way that Kirkland is doing, Canelo instead can focus on actual boxing training to get him ready for the fight.
You have to give Canelo’s trainer Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions has to be given high praise for him helping in picking out the out of shape and ring rusty Kirkland for the red-headed Canelo to fight instead of one of the in shape and dangerous light middleweights like the Charlo Broners or Demetrius Andrade.
Canelo should be fighting those guys instead of being put in with out of shape fighters like Kirkland. More importantly, Canelo should be fighting at middleweight against guys like Gennady Golovkin at this point in his career instead of being matched against an inactive middleweight at a catch-weight of 155 pounds. This is the third straight fight that Canelo is fighting at a catch-weight.
It’s unclear who Canelo will be steered towards once the Kirkland fight is over with. It’s doubtful, however, that he’ll be matched against Erislandy Lara again after the struggles Canelo had against him last year in July.
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