By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is excited about the May 6th fight between Saul Canelo Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. De La Hoya believes this is a fight that will FINALLY draw the casual boxing fans to purchase the fight in high numbers on HBO PPV.
It’s a match-up between two popular Mexican fighters, and the fight is going to be televised in the U.S on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo. De La Hoya believes that the timing of the fight will bring a lot of success for the event. It remains to be seen though whether it will or not.
Canelo’s pay-per-view numbers have been dropping since 2016 with each fight bringing in fewer buys. You can blame Golden Boy for that because they’ve become very, very careful with the match-making they’re doing for their 27-year-old star Canelo.
Instead of putting Canelo in competitive fights against fighters with a chance of beating him, Golden Boy has matched him against Amir Khan and Liam Smith, two fighters that are not even close to being the best in their respective divisions. De La Hoya tried selling Liam Smith as being the best fighter in the 154lb division, but the fans knew better. They saw him as just a fodder opponent for Canelo to pad his record with and to win the WBO paper title last September.
“Boxing has been searching for a fight to draw the casual fan back to our sport, and Canelo versus Chávez, Jr. is just that fight,” said De La Hoya. “Canelo, the biggest star boxing, will take on not only a former world champion in Julio César Chávez, Jr., but the son of the biggest star in the history of boxing in Mexico. Add in 98 victories and 66 knockouts between these two superstars along with a Cinco de Mayo fight date, and you have a can’t-miss battle.”
I think the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight will sell to a segment of the U.S fans, but not for the fans who don’t think much of Chavez Jr. The hardcore boxing fans realize that this fight is little more than just another mismatch involving Canelo fighting another faded fighter, whose career is basically done in Chavez Jr. We saw Canelo fight James Kirkland in 2015.
Kirkland was a fighter that at one time had a promising career, but he was not that same fighter by the time that Golden Boy picked him to fight Canelo. It’s the same exact thing with Chavez Jr. He was once a good fighter, but his career has fallen apart from the combination of inactivity and poor training. I think the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight will do at least as good as Canelo’s match against Miguel Cotto in 2015, but not more than that. That fight brought in 900,000 buys on HBO PPV. Golden Boy would obviously be happy to get those numbers for the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight, but they’re obviously hoping for much more. De La Hoya predicted that the Canelo-Cotto fight would bring in over 2 million buys. We haven’t yet heard a prediction from De L Hoya on the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight.
It looks like a cash out fight for Chavez Jr. He hasn’t been training hard for the last four years, and he’s looked bad in every fight that he’s had since his loss to Sergio Martinez in 2012, Chavez Jr. appears to be done as a fighter. His match against Canelo on May 6 should be the equivalent of Chavez Jr. getting his golden parachute to retire on. Few boxing fans see it as a competitive fight. Chavez Jr. will likely take a beating, and get stopped quickly just like Kirkland did against Canelo. The 164.5lb catchweight will likely weaken Chavez Jr. to the point where he’ll not have the energy to fight hard for more than two or three rounds at best.
“I dedicate this fight to Mexico,” said Julio César Chávez, Jr. “I’m going to win, but my country will too because this is the fight that boxing needs.”
I don’t think this is the fight that boxing needs. The fight that the sport needs is for Canelo to face Gennady Golovkin while he’s still relatively young. The sport doesn’t need mismatches like Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. If Canelo and Golden Boy want a fight that will inject life into boxing, they’ll make sure the Golovkin fight happens this September.