By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC 154lb champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) participated in his media day in San Diego House of Boxing gym. Canelo, 25, is getting ready for his HBO PPV fight against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs) this month on 11/21 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Canelo’s longtime promoter Oscar De La Hoya believes that he’s going to find success in this fight, and that this is only the beginning for his fighter. De La Hoya believes that Canelo is on his way to becoming a huge star, especially now that Floyd Mayweather Jr. is no longer around to hog the limelight.
Whether Canelo can become a huge star without fighting IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin is the major question, because De La Hoya doesn’t seem to be in any rush to put his young would be star in with Golovkin right now. When asked when he’ll make that fight, De La Hoya has bounced around with different comments and different times.
It’s hard to keep track of all the different things that De La Hoya has said about a potential fight between them. However, it looks like De La Hoya is going to have Canelo wait at least two years, possibly more before he puts him in with the now 33-year-old Golovkin. The longer De La Hoya waits the better it is for Canelo. He’s a lot younger than Golovkin, so it’s quite possible that he can wait him out until he’s old and gray before making that fight.
“I think the best is yet to come with him,” said De La Hoya via ESPN.com at the media day. “He has grown as a fighter every year, learning from victories and his losses. Legacy is important to him, and when all is said and done, I know he will be remembered as one of the best in the sport.”
If Canelo loses to Cotto on November 21st, then that’s going to be real downer for De La Hoya. He’ll have to back him off from fighting the good fighters and put him back on the James Kirkland and Alfredo Angulo fight plan to try and bring him back. De La Hoya can still craft Canelo into a star with the right kind of match-making, but it’ll be clear that he won’t be able to match him against certain guys for him to become the star that he wants him to be. It would be more of a manufactured star rather than someone who becomes a star by fighting and beating all the best fighters at 154, 160, 168 and 175. Canelo has the size to fight fighters from welterweight to light heavyweight.
Whether De La Hoya will let him fight guys as big as him or bigger is the major question. We already know that De La Hoya is fine with Canelo fighting smaller guys than him, because he’s been going that much of his career. Now we’d like to see if he’s willing to fight guys his own size or slightly smaller like Golovkin. There’s no reason why Canelo shouldn’t be able to fight Golovkin, because he is after all heavier than him.
Right now, Canelo hasn’t done much in terms of his career. His best wins over Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara, were controversial victories. Those fights could arguably be called losses or possibly draws for Canelo rather than wins. Canelo lost badly to Floyd Mayweather Jr. Other than those three fights, Canelo’s wins have come against flawed and/or old fighters like Shane Mosley, Matthew Hatton, Alfredo Angulo, James Kirkland, Alfonso Gomez, Kermit Cintron, Ryan Rhodes, Josesito Lopez, Jose Miguel Cotto, Lovemore Ndou and Carlos Baldomir. Those fighters were good at one time in their careers, but by the time that Canelo fought them, they had seen better days. Some of those fighters were badly out-sized by the heavier Canelo, and the fights should have never been made in the first place. Canelo beat Matthew Hatton, a welterweight with marginal skills, at a catch-weight of 150lbs for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title. Canelo came in over the limit at 151 pounds for the catch-weight. It’s unclear why he fought a welterweight like Matthew Hatton for the vacant WBC 154lb title rather than a top junior middleweight contender.
“I am not afraid of any fighter, but right now I am focused on Cotto,” Alvarez said to ESPN.com. “Once this fight is over we can move on to the next big fight.”
Canelo isn’t interested in talking about a fight against Golovkin. However, in an interview last week, Canelo said that he can fight Golovkin at some point in the future if he’s willing to fight him at a catch-weight of 155lbs, because he doesn’t see himself as a middleweight. Canelo has been as heavy as 175lbs for his fights after rehydrating.
Golovkin comes in at around 170lbs after rehydrating. It’s unknown at what point Canelo will feel like he’s big enough to fight at the full weight for the middleweight division. But if 175 isn’t big enough to fight at 160, then you can only imagine what weight Canelo will be at when he finally does feel comfortable to fight middleweights at their full weight. Hopefully, it won’t be when he’s in his 180s or 190s, because that would be 20 to 30 pounds over the 160lb limit. It would be a huge amount of water weight to lose for Canelo.
It’s going to be really interesting to see which direction De La Hoya has Canelo take if he somehow beats Cotto this month. Will De La Hoya let Canelo fight Golovkin, or will he have him vacate the WBC middleweight title and drop back to his 155lb middleweight catch-weight that he’s been fighting at since 2014. Canelo can lure the welterweights up to 155 for him to fight them, and he can fight some of the junior middleweights. I’m not sure who there is in that division that De La Hoya would be comfortable matching Canelo against. Hopefully the Charlo brothers would be on De La Hoya’s list, because it wouldn’t look good if he tries to set him up with Joshua Clottey, a fighter that Canelo was poised to fight last year before being sidelined by an ankle injury.
“Canelo is a serious fighter who doesn’t take any opponent lightly. He is always ready and willing to fight the best fighters in the sport,” Canelo’s trainer Eddy Reynoso said.
Comments are closed.