(Photo Credit: Alex Menendez – HoganPhotos/Golden Boy Promotions) By Dan Ambrose: Middleweight Gabriel Rosado (22-9, 13 KOs) made it be known last Saturday that he would like to be considered as the next opponent for WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) for his voluntary defense of his WBC title on May 7th.
Rosado won a 10 round unanimous decision over Joshua Clottey (39-6, 22 KOs) on the undercard of the Luis Ortiz vs. Bryant Jennings fight card on HBO Latino. That was a fine scalp that Rosado added to his collection.
Dan Rafael of ESPn doubts that the 28-year-old Rosado will get the fight against Canelo, because his next fight is expected to be on pay-per-view on HBO. Asking the boxing public to pay to see him fight Rosado would be a tough sell. However, Canelo has done it in the past when he fought Alfredo Angulo on HBO PPV last year in March 2014.
If Canelo was willing to fight a ring rusty Angulo, who reportedly had to drop 45 pounds of fat during training for that fight, then he might be willing to face a fighter like Rosado. I don’t see how Canelo vs. Rosado is any worse than Canelo vs. Angulo or Canelo vs. James Kirkland. Those were terrible fights with Canelo matched against inactive fighters that had to take off a ton of weight in order to fight him. I think Rosado fits in better with Canelo than those guys did. At least Rosado has been active lately. He hasn’t been winning his fights, but he’s been active.
”I delivered an entertaining fight tonight and I was happy with my performance. I am ready for my next big challenge, I would like a shot at Canelo [Alvarez] next,” Rosado said.
Rosado had a slight advantage over Clottey in terms of size. Clottey may be fighting at junior middleweight right now at this point in his career, but he’s still pretty much little more than a blown up welterweight. Clottey had no business fighting in the middleweight division against a legitimate middleweight like Rosado. The size advantage that Rosado had over Clottey effectively won the fight for him. If you take away Rosado’s size advantage, I think Clottey would have won the fight with no problems.
The win for Rosado was his first since he beat Charles Whittaker three years ago in 2012. It’s hard to believe that Rosado went three years in between wins, but that’s the reality of his situation. Rosado has been busy for the last three years, but he’s lost to Gennady Golovkin, Jermell Charlo and David Lemieux. Rosado dodged a loss to J’Leon Love in a fight he lost, but the fight was changed to a no contest after Love tested positive for a banned substance after the fight.
“That’s a fight that Gabe wants but I tend to doubt it,” Rafael said via ESPN.com. “If Canelo is going to be on PPV, which the May fight is supposed to be, sorry, but that is a disgrace of a PPV main event. I like watching Gabe but that would not fly as a PPV IMO. The negativity around that match as a pay event would be overwhelming.”
Canelo has to fight somebody, and it’s not as if Golden Boy Promotions is going to put him in with anyone dangerous for his next fight. In an ideal world, it would be great if Golden Boy pooled from the junior middleweight division to match Canelo against the likes of Demetrius Andrade or Jermall Charlo to fight him at his special catch-weight of 155lbs. That’s not going to happen though. It’s probably going to be someone ranked near the bottom of the WBC’s ranking in the middleweight division. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Daniel Geale is dragged out for the fight. Geale was stopped by Golovkin in the 3rd round in June of 2014, and then picked out by Miguel Cotto for his first defense of his WBC middleweight title last July. Geale lost that fight too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Golden Boy drags Geale out for Canelo to fight as well. It would be a terrible fight, but I could see it happening.
Here are the last six contenders in the WBC’s top 15 rankings:
10. Avtandil Khurtsidze
11. Daniel Geale
12. Sam Soliman
13. Ievgen Khytrov
14. Akio Shibata
15. Nick Blackwell
If you look at that bunch, Geale is better known in the U.S than the other fighters from that list. I think it’ll probably be Geale. I’d personally rather see Rosado get the fight with Canelo than to see Geale dragged out again an opponent. It would be forlorn if Geale gets yet another shot at a world title after having been stopped by Golovkin and Cotto.
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