By Patrick McHugh: WBO junior middleweight champion Liam “Beefy” Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs) successfully weighed in at 154 pounds on the button on Friday afternoon for his title defense against Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) for their fight on Saturday night at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Canelo also came in at 154 pounds. Canelo looked very thin at the weigh-in. Canelo looked almost annoyed when standing next to Smith, as Canelo quickly walked away after just a short period of time.
Canelo had to disrobe completely for him to make weight. This could be a sign that he struggled to make the 154lb limit. He did not look good at the weight or comfortable.
It was a real low turn-out from the crowd for the weigh-in at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington. It’s unclear whether the boxing public were busy working or what. Whatever the case, there were very few fans that showed up to see Canelo compared to his past weigh-ins. This suggests that the fans aren’t as excited about the fight as originally thought. Over 30,000 tickets have reportedly been sold with a large walk-up crowd expected on Saturday night. Still, the attendance is likely going to be well below the 60,000 that Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya had predicted for the fight.
De La Hoya predicted that the crowd would surpass the 41,000 that showed up to see Manny Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito six years ago in 2010 at the Texas Stadium. De La Hoya further predicted that the Canelo-Smith would bring in more pay-per-view buys on HBO then the 1.15 million buys that the Pacquiao-Margarito fight brought in. If Canelo vs. Smith can bring in over 1 million buys, it would be pretty impressive, because the Canelo vs. Miguel Cotto fight drew 900,000 buys last November. Cotto is a bigger name in the U.S than Liam Smith. It stands toi reason that a fight between Smith and Canelo would draw fewer buys than Canelo-Cotto, not more.
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In the co-feature weights, #10 WBO middleweight contender Gabriel Rosado (23-9, 13 KOs) weighed in at 159.25 pounds for his fight against Willie Monroe Jr. (20-2, 6 KOs) for their 12 round fight. Monroe Jr. weighed in at 158.75lbs. Both fighters have been knocked out by Gennady Golovkin in the past. The winner of the Rosado-Monroe Jr. fight has a good chance of fighting Canelo in either December this year or in May of 2017. Monroe and Rosado are both with Golden Boy promotions, which makes it logical for them to fight Canelo even though they’re technically fringe contenders and not highly ranked fighters. During the Monroe Jr. vs. Rosado stare down, Rosado shoved Monroe hard in response to something he said to him.
Other weigh-in results:
Diego De La Hoya vs. Orlando Del Valle. Both fighters came in at 121.75.