By Mike Smith: Saul Canelo Alvarez’s decision to sign with DAZN on Wednesday now sets the table for a fight between him and former WBA middleweight champion Daniel ‘The Miracle Man’ Jacobs (34-2, 29 KOs) next May, according to Danny’s promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing USA.
Hearn says Jacobs, 31, is the favorite to face Canelo next May. Jacobs, of course, needs to win his match against Sergiy ‘The Technician’ Derevyanchenko (12-0, 10 KOs) on October 27 on HBO World Championship Boxing at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Canelo, 28, has fight against WBA ‘regular’ super middleweight champion Rocky Fielding (27-1, 15 KOs) on December 15 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Canelo is expected to move back down to 160 after the fight, and either defend his newly won WBA/WBC 160 lb titles or face one of the other champions in a unification fight in May of 2019. Hearn is betting that Canelo fights Jacobs, because both of them are now with DAZN, which makes the options limited for him.
“Those are natural fights,” Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing USA/DAZN said to the media about Canelo vs. Jacobs. “That will happen because we’re on the same ship. I think the Daniel Jacobs fight is the favorite for May, to be honest with you if he can win here next Saturday,” Hearn said.
Hearn has a habit of speaking for fighters that aren’t promoted by him. In this example, Hearn is predicting that Canelo will fight his Matchroom Boxing USA fighter despite not being the promoter for the Mexican star. Considering how large and dangerous the 6’1″ Jacobs is, it’s unlikely Canelo, 5’8″, is going to want any part of facing him unless he looks vulnerable in beating Sergiy Derevyanchenko on October 27. You have to look at risk and reward when it comes to a fighter like Jacobs. He’s not a big star in the U.S, so Canelo isn’t going to bring in a lot of subscribers by facing him on DAZN. If the risk isn’t worth the reward, then Canelo is not going to take a fight against a dangerous fighter like Jacobs.
Alvarez fights the guys that he wants to fight, and it doesn’t matter what Hearn wants. The chances are better that Canelo fights someone like David Lemieux in May. Hearn is thinking that Canelo is boxed in now that he’s fighting on DAZN, so he’s going to be limited to the point where he has to look in the direction of Jacobs for his May 2019 fight. I don’t think it works that way. Canelo can get anyone he wants no matter what platform they fight on. If Golden Boy offers a Showtime fighter a bout against Canelo next May, their promoter/manager likely won’t turn down the fight just because it’s going to take place on DAZN.
Canelo (50-1-2, 34 KOs) says he wants to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Gennady Golovkin. Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions are hard to predict. David Lemieux had been mentioned as a possibility for Canelo’s December fight, but instead Golden Boy went with Fielding as the Mexican star’s opponent. Since Lemieux didn’t get the fight with Canelo in December, he’ll be one of the options to face him in May of 2019. The World Boxing Council voted to give Canelo a voluntary defense of his WBC middleweight title for his next fight, but he instead decided to move up to 168 to face Fielding for his WBA title.
“He’s going to bring in over 1 million subscribers in his December fight, and then he’s going to fight Jacobs and then he’s going to fight Golovkin,” Hearn said about Canelo’s fight against Fielding. ”We don’t even have to pay pay-per-view for it, and then Joshua is going to fight Wilder. It’s going to be part of your monthly subscription.”
Hearn might be jumping to a lot of conclusions about his predictions of the success of Canelo’s fight against Fielding on December 15 in terms of the amount of subscribers the fight pulls in. The thing boxing fans can do when predicting how many subscribers Canelo-Fielding pulls in is to look at Canelo’s fight against British junior middleweight Liam Smith in September 2016. Canelo vs. Smith brought in just 300,000 buys on HBO. The reason for that is obvious. Smith was an unknown in the United States, so the boxing fans in that country chose not to purchase the Canelo-Smith fight on PPV. It could be the same thing with Canelo fighting Fielding, who is just as much of an unknown in the U.S as Smith was.
“I think Andrade has got that style where not everyone is jumping up to fight, because he’s going to be very tough to beat. Money talks,” Hearn said. “I’d like to see Andrade have one more fight in February or March and then go in unifications, because he’s been so inactive. He’s been training 10 months to fight a southpaw, and now he’s fighting an unknown puncher from Namibia. He’s got to get over the line on Saturday,” Hearn said.
Andrade (25-0, 16 KOs) faces Walter Kautondokwa (17-0, 16 KOs) this Saturday night for the vacant World Boxing Organization middleweight title that was vacated by Billy Joe Saunders last week after his failure to get licensed by the Massachusetts State Athletic Commission following VADA releasing the news of his positive test for the banned drug oxilfrine. Andrade, 30, is signed with Hearn, who is hoping that if he wins the WBO title, he’ll be able to get fights against Canelo and Gennady Golovkin. Right now, Hearn wants Andrade to get some of the rust out from his system before he looks to take on the tougher fighters in the division. Of course, if Canelo or GGG all of a sudden show interest in fighting Andrade, Hearn isn’t going to turn down those fights. It might be the only chance Andrade ever gets in fighting one or both of them and he’s not going to reject the fight if it’s offered to him. But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were him waiting for Canelo and/or GGG to show interest in fighting him.