De La Hoya expects Canelo-Khan to bring in twice the numbers Canelo-Cotto did

By Boxing News - 04/26/2016 - Comments

1-CaneloPrepares4Khan_Hoganphotos5By Jeff Aranow: If Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya’s predictions come true, the May 7 fight between WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Amir Khan will be bringing in twice the pay-per-view numbers on HBO than last November’s fight between Canelo and Miguel Cotto.

Canelo-Cotto brought in 900,000 PPV buys on HBO, which were very good numbers and made Golden Boy happy.

There does seem to be quite a bit of interest in the Canelo vs. Khan fight that we didn’t see leading up to the Canelo vs. Cotto fight despite the fact that Canelo-Khan is seen largely by boxing fans as a mismatch. It could be that Khan is doing a much better job of selling his fight against Canelo compared to Cotto.

Canelo never does a lot of talking to sell his fights, and he generally leaves it up to his opponents or his promoter De La Hoya to do the trash talking. Cotto is the same way as Canelo. He doesn’t talk much and his opponents or trainer Freddie Roach does the talking for him. Khan has done so much self-promoting for this fight that he’s been able to convince a lot of boxing fans that he has a real chance of pulling off an upset.

In speaking about Canelo’s fight against Amir Khan on May 7, De La Hoya said “It’s a blockbuster event. All indications are telling us this is going to be twice as big as Canelo-Cotto. So we’re excited. We’re thrilled. We expect a huge, huge turnout. Amir’s looking really good. It doesn’t surprise me. This guy is a hard worker. He’s just a warrior, a trooper. He goes down, and he gets back up. When has he been in a boring fight? This is going to be a good fight,” said De La Hoya.

Even if the Canelo-Khan fight fails to bring in 1.8 million PPV buys like De La Hoya is predicting it’ll do, it will still be great if it can bring in 1 million buys. Those are very good numbers and I’m sure De La Hoya won’t be complaining if they can bring in that many buys.

“I think Canelo has to be a little worried with Amir’s speed and his punches in bunches. He throws and he moves,” said De La Hoya. “I believe Virgil Hunter has him throwing and circling to give Canelo angles and lose Canelo. I think the guy that makes a mistake is going to pay for it. Canelo has to fight the perfect fight as well.”

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Canelo needs to realize that things can go very wrong for him if he can’t deal with Khan’s speed. This is arguably the fasted guy that Canelo has ever fought before, and he could struggle big time.

Khan has an advantage over Canelo in that his last opponent Chris Algieri came into their fight in the 160s and he applied a lot of pressure on Khan for the full 12 rounds. This was a very good tune-up fight for Khan to get him ready for what he’ll be dealing with on May 7. Khan also has been using Liam Smith to help get ready for the fight and he’s similar to Canelo.