By Dan Ambrose: The WBO is reportedly going to allow Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs) to keep his WBO junior middleweight title while he moves up to super middleweight to fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (50-2-1, 32 KOs) for their catch-weight fight at 164 ½ pounds on May 6 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
According to RingTV.com, Canelo will need to make a decision 10 days after the Chavez Jr. fight if he plans on keeping the WBO junior middleweight title or give it up. It would seem fairly obvious that Canelo will be giving up the WBO 154lb title, because he’s supposedly going to be fighting middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in September.
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya also said there’s a chance that Canelo could fight a rematch with Chavez Jr. in his next fight after their fight on May 6. If that’s the case, then Canelo will have to give up his WBO 154lb. title, because he’s not going to get Chavez Jr. to melt down to 154 to fight him for his WBO belt.
“Once he fights Chavez then he has 10 days to decide what he wants to do with the title. He will decide what he wants to do after the fight,” WBO President Francisco Valcarcel said to RingTV.com.
I wonder if Canelo is going to parade his WBO 154lb title into the ring with him before the Chavez Jr. fight. In other words, the WBO title would be a prop to make Canelo look better as he marches into the ring to fight Chavez Jr. I hope that’s not what we see, because as huge as Canelo is at this point, he should be fighting at the full weight for the middleweight division or higher. He’s so huge at this point in his career.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions agrees that Canelo is now bigger than Golovkin. It would look funny if Canelo has the WBO 154lb title displayed as he comes out for the Chavez Jr. fight, because the two fighters won’t be competing for the belt. It’s not as if Chavez Jr. will win the WBO belt if he takes Canelo’s scalp by beating him in the fight.
I think for better or worse, Canelo is now going to be fighting in the middleweight division or higher for the remainder of his career. That potentially could be bad news for Canelo if he doesn’t have the talent to beat the best fighter in the 160lb division.
It’s not as if Canelo could go back to 155 to resume fighting at the ‘Canelo weight’ against fighters that he pulls up or down in weight to fight him in that specially designed weight. Canelo needs to show that he can fight in normal weight classes like other fighters do rather than him perching at catch-weigh and using it for an advantage against his opponents.
Canelo won the WBO 154lb title on September 17 when he beat WBO champion Liam Smith by a 9th round knockout at the AT&T Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada. Before the fight, Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya insisted that Liam Smith was the best fighter in the 154lb division.
Few boxing fans believed that. When the fight started and the fans saw how mediocre Liam Smith was, then it was clear that he wasn’t the best fighter in the 154lb division. As bad as Smith fought, he might not have been even the No.10 best fighter in the 154lb division.