Canelo suffers fractured hand, won’t fight until 2017

By Boxing News - 09/19/2016 - Comments

canelo12

By Dan Ambrose: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 Kos) suffered a fractured right hand in his 9th round knockout win over WBO junoor middleweight champion Liam Smith last Saturday night, and the injury will keep the Mexican star outside of the ring for the remainder of 2016.

This is certainly bad news for Canelo and for his promoters at Golden Boy, as they were hoping to squeeze in one more fight this year, possibly against WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders. Canelo will likely be fighting next in May 2017 on the Cinco de Mayo holiday weekend. This is supposedly the last fight for Canelo until he faces unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) in September 2017.

Here’s the press release from Golden Boy:

“Today Canelo Alvarez visited specialist Dr. Pedro Jaime Lomeli, after injuring his right hand during his ninth round knockout victory over Liam “Beefy” Smith to win the WBO Junior Middleweight World Championship on September 17, 2016.

After taking x-rays and conducting a CT scan, the doctor found an avulsion fracture of the right thumb. Canelo does not need surgery and the prognosis is excellent.

Canelo’s hand will be immobilized for the next six weeks, and he will be unable to fight again in 2016.

This does nothing to Canelo’s plans to move up and take on the best in the middleweight division next year.”

What we saw last Saturday was Canelo coming out quickly in the 1st round in looking to score a fast knockout of Smith. It appeared that Canelo was banking on him being able to stop Smith fast before his stamina problems surfaced. Unfortunately the knockdown didn’t come for Canelo, so we saw him start to gas after the first few rounds.

Canelo spent a lot of time on the ropes. Roy Jones Jr. of HBO thought it was a strategy by Canelo to get used to fighting on the ropes. Jones was giving Canelo the benefit of the doubt. However, if you look at Canelo’s fight against Austin Trout in 2013, Canelo went to the ropes in the same way after Trout came out fast and forced him to fight at a busy pace. Canelo was red-faced and tired in the Trout fight, and he looked the same way last Saturday night against Smith.

Canelo hurt his right hand early on against Liam Smith in the 2nd, according to Canelo. He says he was forced to use his left hand the rest of the way, but that obviously isn’t what we saw last Saturday night. Canelo was still throwing right hands all the way up until the last seconds of the fight. Indeed, the 7th round knockdown of Liam Smith came from a right hand from Canelo. If he was only fighting with his left hand as he maintains, then why did Smith end up on the canvas from a right hand in the 7th?

The hand injury for Canelo potentially complicates matter for a fight against Golovkin. We might end up seeing Canelo choose to take a tune-up fight in May and then another tune-up after that to get ready for GGG. We don’t even know whether the fight will happen at all next year. In that case, Canelo can take tune-ups for the entire 2017 year if he wants to because the only fight the boxing fans want to see him take is against Golovkin. There’s no pressing desire from boxing fans to see Canelo fight Billy Joe Saunders, Stevens or David Lemieux. I think fans would like to see Canelo fight Daniel Jacobs, Erislandy Lara, the Charlo brothers, and Julian Williams. I don’t think the feeling is mutual with Golden Boy Promotions and Canelo’s training team. Those guys are difficult and would have a good chance of beating Canelo.

The injury for Canelo means little in the big scheme of things, as he likely wasn’t going to be facing anyone of consequence in his next fight in December. The pool of opponents for Canelo’s December fight was down to these candidates: David Lemieux, Billy Joe Saunders and Curtis Stevens. Not surprisingly, Willie Monroe Jr. was ruled out as an option for Canelo by his trainer Eddie Reynoso despite him looking good in beating fellow Golden Boy fighter Gabriel Rosado. You can argue that Monroe may have been too similar to Floyd Mayweather Jr. for Canelo; hence, he wasn’t going to be given the fight.

The news of Canelo not fighting for the remainder of 2016 isn’t going to likely bum out too many boxing fans, because the only guy they want to see Canelo fighting right now is Gennady Golovkin, and that fight isn’t going to happen. Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy are going to wait until some point in the future before they make the fight. De La Hoya said it WILL happen next year in September, but that’s hard to believe given that his eight-figure offer to Golovkin was reportedly rejected by his promoter Tom Loeffler. Unless Golden Boy is ready to bump up the offer to something that is agreeable to Loeffler and Golovkin, we may not see the Canelo-Golovkin fight for some time.