De La Hoya: Saunders’ offer cut in half for Canelo fight

By Boxing News - 12/06/2016 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya says the offer that he made to WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders for a fight against Golden Boy Promotions star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez is now going to be cut in half due to Saunders’ poor performance last Saturday night against fringe contender Artur Akavov at the Lagoon Centre in Paisley, Scotland.

Saunders (24-0, 12 KOs) looked very, very poor in winning a narrow 12 round unanimous decision over the Russian Akavov (16-2, 7 KOs) by the scores 116-113, 116-112 and 116-113. There were a lot of boxing fans who felt that Akavov did enough to deserve the victory or at least a draw. However, Saunders was the home fighter in terms of him being from the UK and Akavov being the visiting fighter from the U.S, which is where he now lives.

It seems that Saunders is the guy who is being potentially targeted for Canelo’s next fight in February. De La Hoya mentioned former IBF middleweight champion David Lemeiux as a possible option for Canelo to fight in May.

De La Hoya said to Fighthub.com this about Saunders’ money offer needing to be sliced in half for a fight against Canelo:

“We’ve made an offer to Billy Joe Saunders, but after his performance, from what I saw, I’m officially cutting that offer in half,” said De La Hoya about an offer he made to Saunders for a Canelo fight. “So if he wants to fight Canelo, he’s more than happy to, but the offer we put on the table doesn’t stand whatsoever. We would have to renegotiate and come to terms because Canelo’s the guy and he’s the man. Obviously, Billy Joe Saunders didn’t make a name for himself in his last fight,” said De La Hoya.

I don’t know if the 27-year-old Saunders is going to be thrilled at the idea of agreeing to fight Canelo for half the money that he was going to be getting previously. I’m betting that Saunders will dig in his heels at signing for half the money against Canelo. You have to remember that IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) and his promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 want to get their hands on the WBO title, because that’s the last title not in the Kazakhstan fighter’s possession.

The problem that Golovkin has is he’s tied down with his fight negotiations for his World Boxing Association ordered match against WBA ‘regular’ middleweight champion Daniel “Miracle Man” Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs). If Golovkin tries to walk away from those negotiations to fight Saunders, the WBA will likely strip him of his WBA title.

Golovkin doesn’t want that to happen, because his goal is to win ALL of the 160lb titles. He’s not going to give one title up just so he can go fight for another one. Golovkin is going to stick it out with Jacobs for as long as possible until he gets that fight done with so he can move forward to te Saunders fight of whoever else has the WBO title by the time he’s free to fight for it.

When asked about Canelo talking a vacation in Canada, De La Hoya said, “Obviously, you’re thinking David Lemieux, from Canada. So we’re going to see in May who he’s going to fight,” said De La Hoya.

Lemieux is the better choice for Canelo to fight on Cinco de Mayo in May 2017, because he’s a big puncher, and the fight will be a lot more entertaining than a match between Canelo and Saunders in May. There will be a lot of boxing fans paying to see Canelo fight in May, because of it being the Mexican holiday. The best way for Canelo to give the fans a good show is to fight Lemieux at that time rather than Saunders. If Golden Boy wants Canelo to still fight Saunders, then they need to get that fight out of the way in February rather than May. There’s also another advantage of Canelo fighting Lemieux in May, and that’s so that Canelo can prepare for his fight in September against Golovkin.

Canelo is going to need to be ready to fight a big puncher. Saunders is a waste of time for Canelo to fight in May if his next fight is going to be Golovkin in September 2017. Of course, if Canelo and Golden Boy have no intentions of fighting Golovkin in September, then they may not need to fight someone dangerous like Lemieux. They could get somebody a little more harmless and safe like Gabriel Rosado or Curtis Stevens. If 300,000 boxing fans were willing to pay to see Canelo fight a little known paper champion like Liam Smith, then the same fans can be counted on to see him beat up on an over-matched Stevens or Rosado.

De La Hoya was then asked if Canelo will still be fighting Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in September 2017, De La Hoya said with a smile on his face, “Oh yes!”

The way that De La Hoya smiled while answering the question of whether Canelo is still fighting Golovkin in September seems to suggest that he’s confident that he’ll beat the Kazakhstan fighter. De La Hoya must have seen some kind of flaw in Golovkin’s game that he believes Canelo can exploit. If De La Hoya is wrong about this flaw, then his golden goose is going to get plucked by Golovkin in front of a large worldwide audience.

De La Hoya might want to have Canelo’s trainer have a towel handy to toss into the ring when/if he starts getting worked over by GGG. At least if they throw in the towel, it will save Canelo from being seen getting taken out on his face or back after getting dropped by Golokin for a knockout. I would hope that Canelo doesn’t have an injury like Golovkin’s last opponent Kell Brook, who suffered a broken right eye socket in losing to him last September. Golovkin punished Brook until his corner threw in the towel in the 5th round to save him.