By Jeff Aranow: Saul Canelo Alvarez underwent arthroscopic knee surgery on Friday, and it was reportedly a success. The 27-year-old Canelo had the knee surgery one in Guadalajara, Mexico. Golden Boy Promotions reportedly mistakenly said Canelo was having cosmetic surgery, but that wasn’t the case.
It remains to be seen whether Canelo will be able to make a full recovery from the surgery to be the fighter that he was in the past. Former two division world champion Sergio Martinez had his career end after he suffered a knee injury in his win over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in 2012. Even though Martinez had knee surgery, he was never able to regain the full strength and mobility in the knee that he had before the injury.
Without the knee strength, Martinez was no longer the same fighter and his career ended shortly after that. It would be unfortunate if we see the same thing happen to Canelo. He’s still young at 27, so he should in theory be able to come back from the injury to continue to have a successful boxing career. But with knee problems, it’s hard to know whether a fighter like Canelo will be able to make a full recovery from it. If Canelo ends up Martinez 2.0, it would be a sad way for his career to be finished.
Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) is expected to be out of the hospital on Saturday, April 14, and he’ll have to rest for a while before he begins the process of rehabbing his knee. Canelo has a lot of time on his hands before his next fight, which should be in September against middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin if he doesn’t lose his belts in his May 5th title defense against an opponent still to be determined at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
“I share with you that today I had to undergo an arthroscopy surgery to repair the internal femoral cartilage and eliminate a pathological plication of my right knee.” I declined the erroneous information published by Golden Boy president Éric Gómez,” Canelo said via instagram. “Thanks for worrying, in three to four weeks I’ll be like new.”
Canelo had plans on fighting Golovkin in a rematch on May 5th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, but the fight was wiped out after the Golden Boy star tested positive for clenbuterol twice in two tests by VADA last February. Canelo’s explanation for the two positive tests was it was from him eating contaminated meat while training in Mexico. Unfortunately for Canelo, the Nevada State Athletic Commission is likely to still suspend him for 1 year when they meet with him on April 18. However, Canelo has a good chance of having his suspension reduced to six months, which will allow him to meet up with Golovkin in September if the two of them are able to negotiate a second fight. Golovkin seems to really want the fight, as he’s expected to take a soft opponent for his May 5th fight to ensure that he doesn’t put his rematch with Canelo at risk. In the first Canelo-GGG fight last September, the judges scored it a 12 round draw. But due to the enormous success of the fight, the two fighters decided to face each other again in a rematch.
There are already a lot of boxing fans that believe that Canelo will never be the same fighter after he faces Golovkin in September. A lot of fans think that Canelo’s two positive drug tests for clenbuterol will decrease his popularity, and that he’ll start going downhill from this point forward. With Canelo’s knee problem, that could be the trigger for him to begin the slide earlier than some expect. We’ll have to see. Canelo is in the wrong division in terms of his size, and if he can’t fight hard without gassing out and running like he did against GGG, he’s not going to go far once he starts fighting other good middleweights.