By Jeff Aranow: Saul “Canelo” Alvarez says his intention for rejecting the World Boxing Council’s commemorative belt for this Saturday’s fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. has nothing to do with him wanting to reject the Indian craft of the belt, but rather because he wants nothing to do with the WBC. Canelo, 26, says there are “business interests” behind the WBC’s belt that they wanted to be on the line for this Saturday’s fight. The belt isn’t a championship belt that the WBC would have available.
It was a commiserative belt, Canelo says he never agreed to fight for the belt. He said it was the WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman that wanted the belt to be there for the fight this Saturday. The WBC had the belt created to give out because there were no world championship titles on the line for this important fight. Chavez Jr. will be given the WBC’s commemorative belt if he wins on Saturday. He hasn’t rejected the belt. If Canelo wins, the belt will stay in the WBC’s headquarters, according to ESPN Deportes. It’s interesting that Chavez Jr. hasn’t rejected the WBC’s belt.
“From the beginning, I wasn’t having it with the WBC,” said Canelo to the boxing media on Tuesday in discussing why he rejected the WBC’s made up belt for his Chavez Jr. fight on Saturday. “From the beginning, Mr. Suliaman, knowing that I wasn’t supporting the WBC, he on his own made the Huichol belt. And in my mind think and knew he was going to say that I didn’t want the belt made by Mexicans is the exact thing that is happening now. It was out decision to not support the WBC, and this was before it was decided to make the Huichol belt for me. My respects go to the Huichol people,” said Canelo.
Unknown to many casual boxing fans, last year, the WBC made unbeaten middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin Canelo’s #1 mandatory challenger at a time when Canelo was the WBC middleweight champion. This put Canelo in the difficult position where he had to defend his WBC title against a world champion in Golovkin, who already held the IBF and WBA middleweight titles. Canelo had legal problems at the time weighing down on him, which required a lot of time outside of the ring. So instead of defending his WBC middleweight title against Golovkin, he vacated the belt. Canelo was and still is being criticized by boxing fans for him vacating his WBC belt rather than fighting Golovkin. So you could understand if there might be bad blood between Canelo and the WBC from that.
The sanction bodies don’t often rank world champions that hold other titles the mandatory challenger to their champions. The move by the WBC to install Golovkin as Canelo’s No.1 contender was seen by a lot of boxing fans as an odd thing. The fans were and still are in favor of seeing the Canelo-Golovkin fight, but it was still viewed as strange by some that a world champion like Golovkin would be made Canelo’s mandatory challenger when he held the WBC 160 lb. title.
Canelo won the WBC belt after beating champion Miguel Cotto in a catch-weight fight in November 2015. Canelo ended up only defending the WBC belt once in knocking out welterweight Amir Khan in the 6th round last year in May. That was supposed to be a voluntary defense for Canelo that would setup a much better fight against Golovkin. Canelo then vacated his WBC title instead of fighting Golovkin, a move which angered many boxing fans.
“From 14 years old, I knew Huichols in Nayarit,” said Canelo. “From 14-15, when I was over there, I’ve known Hichols. My respect to the people who do that do that, but Suliaman went there and is making people think that I’m the bad guy, and that I don’t want to accept this made by Mexicans. That’s totally false. Why, because there’s a lot of interests behind that belt, exhibiting it on the internet, in hotels. Why, because there are interests. The belt has a little sponsor mark that they pay for. There’s a lot of business interests behind that belt. My respects go to the Huichols, but because I knew this would happen, part of my attire for the fight is Huichol. I respect the people who made all of that. I respect them. It’s not that I do not want the belt or disrespecting them. I don’t want nothing to do with the WBC. A champion I have in the gym is Huichol, so they can’t say that I don’t want a Huichol. My respect for the Huichols, and part of my robes are Huichol, because I knew this would happen. The belt has many business interests because of the art they made signifies a lot. But from the beginning wasn’t going to be Huichol. My respects to the people who do that, the Huichol, but even people from that region are coming to me presenting me with stuff,” said Canelo.
The Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight card will have some big names on the undercard with former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux, light welterweight contender Lucas Matthysse, unbeaten featherweight Joseph Diaz Jr. , Mexican Olympian Raul Curiel and Marlen Esparza all in action. Lemieux is fighting Marcos Reyes in middleweight action in the co-feature bout. Matthysse will be fighting at welterweight against Emanuel Taylor.
Canelo (48-1-1, 34 KOs) is the favorite to beat Chavez Jr. It’s understandable why the redheaded Mexican star Canelo is viewed by the bettors as the favorite, because he’s taken his boxing career more seriously than Chavez Jr. in the last half dozen years of his career, and he’s accomplished far more during that time frame. Chavez Jr. was at one time a world champion at middleweight in holding the WBC belt, but he didn’t train properly for his fight against Sergio Martinez in 2012 and gave up the belt without putting up much of a fight.
Chavez Jr’s career has been in a free-fall since his loss to Martinez. He seemingly has just gone through the motions with his subsequent fights, looking unmotivated, lackluster and sluggish. Chavez Jr. has dealt with weight problems though most of the last five years of his career. The weight problems that Chavez Jr. has had could be one of the reasons why he was selected by Golden Boy to fight Canelo. The Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight will be at a catch-weight of 164 ½ pounds, which on paper could play into Canelo’s hands. It’s still hard to know for sure if this will work in his favor or not, because Chavez Jr. might have still been capable of fighting at middleweight all these past 5 years if he’d been motivated properly.
If Chavez Jr. does make the 164.5lb catch-weight limit this Friday and if he comes into the fight strong after he rehydrates, Canelo could be in for a really hard fight. This could be a fight that Canelo loses. Canelo has lost in the past to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, but that was against the best fighter in boxing. Losing to Chavez Jr. would be a big blow to Canelo’s career, because he’s supposed to be the better fighter. Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions has been saying that he’s the best fighter in the middleweight division and capable knocking out Golovkin when the two of them fight each other in September.
As mentioned previously, the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight will not have a championship level world title a stake for the fight. The WBC wanted to put their Adolfo López Mateos belt on the line for either fighter to win, but the belt has been rejected by Canelo. The belt won’t be counted as a championship strap if Chavez Jr. wins it on Saturday.
The judges for the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight are as follows: Adalaide Byrd, Glen Feldman and Dave Moretti. The referee is Kenny Bayless.
To purchase the Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight on HBO pay-per-view, boxing fans will pay $70 for HBO HD. The fight is expected to bring in a minimum of 900,000 buys on HBO PPV. If the fight does reach the 1 million buy mark, it would be the first fight since the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao match in 2015 to reach 1 million buys. The highest buy total since the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was 900,000 buys for Canelo’s fight against Miguel Cotto in 2015 on HBO PPV. It’s thought by some that the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight hurt the PPV industry due to the combination of the sky-high prices and the lack of action in the fight. Both fighters looked like they were just going through the motions, and not putting out a lot of effort to make it an exciting fight for the fans that had paid a lot of money to see it.
The T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada is expected to have 21,000 boxing fans in attendance for the Canelo vs. Chavez Jr. fight on Saturday. The fight will also be seen on closed circuit.
The winner of this Saturday’s Canelo-Chavez Jr. fight will be a huge star in their native Mexico. The loser will need to hit the reset button on their career.
