By Dan Ambrose: Boxing fans can get a preview of the May 7 clash between WBC middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Amir Khan tonight on HBO starting at 11:15 p.m. ET/PT. Canelo-Khan will be facing off on Max Kellerman’s Face off special. The fighters and Kellerman will be discussing their May 7 fight on HBO PPV.
Kellerman will be asking the questions and looking to find out what makes these two fighters tick. Kellerman is a decent host when focusing on the fights, but hopefully he doesn’t steer away from the fight into stuff about the fighters’ lives because it sometimes gets boring watching Kellerman ask pointless questions that don’t add to the fights. It can get pretty boring listening to the questions Kellerman asks. He needs a better producer that can go over the questions he asks the fighters so that the dull drama stuff gets filtered out.
Khan’s trainer Virgil Hunter will be with him. Canelo’s trainer Eddy Reynoso will be with him. It should be interesting to hear what Reynoso says about why Canelo needs a catch-weight of 155lbs to fight guys like IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. That should be a question that Kellerman asks him, but I doubt he will.
It would be nice to hear Reynoso explain why Canelo, who rehydrates to 175, would need a catch-weight of 155 to fight any of the middleweights in the division. That makes no sense at all for a fighter as heavy as Canelo to be still fighting at catch-weights at this point in his career. The move would have made sense years ago when Canelo was fighting at welterweight, but he’s clearly a middleweight at this point in his career.
Khan is fighting for the first time at middleweight, and he says he asked to have the fight take place at junior middleweight but it didn’t happen. Khan has been reportedly doing a great job of bulking up in weight to fight at middleweight. Khan could come into the fight in the 160s. However, adding weight isn’t the problem for the 29-year-old Khan. The real problem is his ability to take a punch from a large middleweight like Canelo.
Khan has shown during his career that he has problems taking punches from lightweights and light welterweights. Khan was knocked out by lightweight Breidis Prescott and light welterweight Danny Garcia in the past. If Khan can’t even take punches from fighters in the 135 and 140lb weight class, then how can he ever hope to take the 175lb Canelo’s shots on May 7? That’s the real question.
Canelo is heavyweight enough to fight light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev. That’s how big Canelo is. He’s like another Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., a fighter that held the WBC middleweight title in the past. Chavez Jr. was great at melting down form the 180s to make the 160lb limit, and then use his size advantage to crush his lighter opponents once he rehydrated back up to the 180s. Canelo probably won’t be anything special once he’s fighting guys at his own weight, but he seems to have a system working well for him with his catch-weight requirements.
Khan vs. Canelo will be taking place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If Khan wins this fight, he’ll have a lot of options available to him for big paydays. He can fight Golovkin on HBO PPV, face Canelo in a rematch, or move back down to 147 and fight IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook in a stadium fight. Khan is ranked #1 by the WBC right now, and he could face unbeaten WBC 147lb champion Danny Garcia in a rematch to try and avenge his 4th round knockout loss to him from 2012.