(Photo credit: World Boxing Council) By Dan Ambrose: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman believes that the unification fight between Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) will go ahead between September and November this year without any snags that could potentially hold it up and keep it from taking place.
Sulaiman isn’t ready to pick a favorite in the fight right now, as he believes it’s a true 50-50 fight. This might be a surprise to some boxing fans, because many believe that Sulaiman likes the 25-year-old Canelo a great deal and wouldn’t like to see him get brutally knocked out by the older Golovkin in this fight. Canelo means a lot to Mexican boxing and it would be a huge blow if he were to suffer a bad KO loss to Golovkin in this fight.
“Only the passage of time can tell what was an individual career peak, but both Canelo and Gennady seem to be in absolutely at their top moments in their respective careers,” Sulaiman said to wbcboxing.com. “Well the Champion is the Champion, but Gennady certainly has all the merits to be a fifty-fifty favorite in this fight.”
In other words, Sulaiman isn’t ready to pick out a favorite in this fight. That’s not surprising because I couldn’t see him picking against either of these fighters, because it would be a real negative potentially if he were to pick Canelo as the favorite, and Golovkin turned out to be the easy winner of the fight. Sulaiman made it easy for Golovkin to get a crack at the WBC title by allowing him to fight for the mandatory spot in the past. This is something that is unheard of because Golovkin was already the WBC middleweight title. That should have been enough to disqualify him from being able to fight in an eliminator spot, but Sulaiman let him. Of course, that was when Puerto Rican fighter Miguel Cotto was the WBC midldweight champion and not Canelo. You have to wonder if the WBC would have let Golovkin get a crack at the WBC title if Canelo were the middleweight champion in the past.
I can’t see Canelo having a 50-50 chance of beating Golovkin. The whole 50-50 thing would make sense if Canelo were to be facing Cotto again, because those two fighters were evenly matched in their contest last November. But it does not make sense now that Golovkin is the mandatory challenger, because he’s arguably a better fighter than Canelo.
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