By Dan Ambrose: Challenger Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) is saying that if WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) comes in over the contractually agreed upon 155 pound catch-weight limit at the weigh-in on May 6th, then there won’t be a fight taking place on May 7 on HBO pay-per-view.
Khan says he gave up on the idea of trying to get the fight at 154 after Team Canelo turned him down, and he’s not just going to let him blow off the catch-weight limit and come in at 157 or 158. The good news for Khan is that Canelo is usually pretty good at making weight.
The bad news is that he failed to make weight in a catch-weight fight in the past in his fight for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title against welterweight Matthew Hatton in 2011. Canelo failed to make the 150lb catch-weight limit. Instead he weighed in at 151 ½ pounds. Hatton made weight in coming in at 149.
It’ll be interesting to see if Khan sticks to his word and pulls out of the fight if Canelo comes in over the 155lb weigh-in limit for the fight. It’s hard to imagine Khan walking away from a ton of money based on his principals, but then again, he’s done it in the past when he chose to walk away from huge money by not fighting Kell Brook. If Khan was willing to walk away from that kind of money, then he might do the same if Canelo fails to make weight.
I don’t think it would be a good career move for Khan to not negotiate on the weight. This kind of stuff should have been written into the contract already. If Khan’s management added a weight penalty of many millions of dollars for every pound that one of the two comes in over the limit, then it wouldn’t be so bad if Canelo failed to make weight. He’d up giving away a sizable percentage of his purse if he came into the weigh-in bloated.
“I feel good at the weight. I’m not going to be the biggest at the weight, but I am going to be kind of strong, and I’ll be the quickest at the weight,” Khan said to Fighthype. “We don’t know what weight Canelo is coming to the fight at. I mean, if he comes into the weigh-in at the scale at 157, 158, then the fights not going to happen. Basically, he has to bat 155, because I gave up a little bit of weight as well. We gave up an extra pound above the 154lb limit. We agreed to it. I know there was a story I read that Canelo was happy to make 154. That’s nonsense. We did ask to make 154. It would have been better for me, but they didn’t want to do that. So 155 is what we all agreed to,” said Khan.
As big as Canelo is, he’s like a ticking time bomb. You have to suspect that Canelo will eventually start missing his favorite 155lb catch-weight limit left and right. We just don’t know when that’s going to happen. We do know that Canelo is taking huge amounts of weight off when he dehydrates for his fights.
A fighter usually can only do that so many times before they eventually bottom out and can longer drop 20+ pounds to make weight. It’s obviously very hard to do, and you can’t know for sure when your body is no longer going to let you do that without causing you to fail to make weight.
We also don’t know how much longer Canelo can take that weight off and still function at a high level. I used to wrestle in high school, and I had to cut 10 pounds to make the 177lb division. It was very difficult for me to take that weight and rehydrate. I felt weak sometimes. I can’t imagine taking 20+ pounds off to make a catch-weight limit of 155 and then put it back on in 24 hours. That has to be hard on Canelo. You have to wonder why he’s doing it. As big as Canelo is, he should be fighting at 160, not at 155.
Gennady Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez believes that Canelo is fighting at the 155lb catch-weight because he wants an excuse for why he doesn’t have to fight Golovkin. He feels that if Golovkin wasn’t around, then Canelo would fight all his fights at 160 rather than at a catch-weight of 155.
“We know he’s [Canelo] going to come in super heavy, but that’s why I’m not going to trade with him,” said Khan. I’m not going to stand there with him, because he’ll be throwing big punches because he’s the naturally bigger guy. By me not dehydrating myself and killing myself, it’s only going to make me more comfortable in this fight and at this weight. It might suit me. We can’t know until the fight happens. I’m not going to stand there and take silly shots that I don’t need to. He’s got decent speed. He’s very powerful, but it’s about having the best game plan,” said Khan.
I think it’s pretty much academic that Canelo is going to come into the fight heavy. I don’t think Canelo can come into his fights at anything less than 170 at this point in his career. There was a time where he could drain down to the upper 160s for his fights, but I think that time is over with. Canelo will likely come into the Khan fight at 175, and possibly even in the 180s.
We don’t really know where Canelo is with his weight right now because he didn’t weigh-in the night of his last fight against Miguel Cotto. We do know that Canelo looked very big during the fight, and Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach estimated that Canelo rehydrated to 185. Roach thinks Canelo put on 30 pounds after he rehydrated after making the 155lb weight limit. Roach was upset with himself for not getting a rehydration limit added to the contract for the fight to keep Canelo from ballooning up in weight after the weigh-in.
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