By Dan Ambrose: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) and Liam Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs) can feel proud that the two of them have produced over 40,000 ticket sales for their match this Saturday at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The number of ticket sales for the Canelo-Smith fight thus far has surpassed the ticket sales for the Manny Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito fight six years ago in 2010.
This is great news Canelo, Smith and for Golden Boy Promotions. CEO Oscar De La Hoya had predicted that the Canelo-Smith fight would bring in more ticket sales than the Pacquiao vs. Margarito fight, and he’s turned out to be right. Also, De La Hoya predicted that the Canelo-Smith fight would bring in more pay-per-view buys on HBO than the Pacquiao-Margarito fight, which brought in 1.15 million buys.
I think that’s going to be a lot harder to make happen, because there’s not a lot of interest in the Canelo-Smith fight. There might be interest in Texas in the Arlington area, but the fight doesn’t appear to be attracting interest from enough fans for it to surpass 1 million buys. Canelo vs. Miguel Cotto hit 900,000 buys, but there was interest in that fight in the U.S.
Still, it’s quite possible that a lot of boxing fans will purchase the Canelo vs. Smith fight on HBO PPV on Saturday night, because it’s the Mexican Independence Day weekend, and a lot of boxing fans will want to watch Canelo fight. I don’t think they’ll mind that he’s not fighting a more recognizable name from the States like the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, or one of the highly skilled foreign fighters like Gennady Golovkin or Erislandy Lara.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyun0qD2_xc
It might be a bad thing if Canelo is able to bring in over 1 million buys for this fight. If he can bring in that many buys fighting a lesser known fighter like Liam Smith in the states, then there would be less of a need for Canelo to fight Golovkin. Why would he? I Canelo can make big money taking the safe fights against lesser known fighters like Smith, then he doesn’t need to ever fight Golovkin and risk getting knocked out and have the gravy train end.
Liam Smith comes from a boxing family. His brothers, Paul Stephen and Callum, have all been or currently are ranked at the world level. Paul Smith twice fought for world titles against former WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham, but lost both fights. Stephen Smith was recently beaten by IBF super featherweight champion Jose Pedraza.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L4gppW0T_w
If Liam can beat Canelo to hold onto his WBO 154lb title, it would be a huge accomplishment, because he will have beaten the No.1 money maker in the sport of boxing. That’s not to say that Liam will be able to hold onto his WBO title for long. He’s likely going to run into trouble sooner or later once he has to defend his belt against a quality contender like Demetrius Andrade, Julian Williams or Miguel Cotto. If Canelo can’t beat Smith, then you’ve got to assume that Cotto won’t be able to do the job either, because he’s small for a junior middleweight at 5’7”.
“I don’t feel any pressure of fighting in the States,” Liam said to espn.com. “Stephen fought a very good Jose Pedraza. Everyone thinks Stephen performed bad, but he just came up against a very good Pedraza. Obviously, I’m going to have to deal on the biggest stage. This is the biggest stage, but it doesn’t faze me and it’s one I’m looking forward to.”
The Canelo-Smith fight will be televised this Saturday by HBO pay-per-view at 9:00 p.m. ET at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Tickets are still on sale, as the stadium seats 80,000 fans, and it’s definitely not going to sell out. If they have a large walkup crowd on Saturday, they might be able to pull 60,000 fans for the night, but they’re still not going to sellout the stadium. The fight is a minor one in terms of interest.
The undercard has the following fights:
– Willie Monroe Jr. facing Gabriel Rosado in a 12 round middleweight bout
– Unbeaten featherweight Joseph Diaz Jr. fighting Andrew Cancio in a 10 round match
– Unbeaten super bantamweight Diego De La Hoy battling Luis Orlando Del Valle in a 10 round fight
“I don’t want to emulate nothing,” Smith said. “I want to beat Canelo on my own and have people talking about Liam Smith. There will be people talking about Liam Smith and not Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe.”
Smith is well thought of by American trainer Freddie Roach, who sees this fight as a very winnable one for him. Roach feels it could be a tossup match. Canelo seems to be pretty confident, but he might not realize what he’s got himself in for until he gets inside the ring on Saturday night. Canelo will still have the crowd on his favor at the AT&T Stadium, and it might prove to be impossible for Smith to get s decision over him no matter what he does inside the ring. Smith would be better off looking to KO Canelo. If he knocks Canelo out, then there’s no way they can take that away from him.
