By Sean Jones: Oscar De La Hoya wants superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. to “pick up the phone” so that he can setup a lucrative rematch with Saul Canelo Alvarez that will bring in an estimated $1.5 billion. De La Hoya believes that a second fight between Canelo and Mayweather will be even bigger than their 2013 match-up, which pulled in over 2 million PPV buys.
Thus far, De La Hoya is hearing nothing in response from Mayweather to suggest that he’s going to be answering the telephone to make this fight happen, and it’s not likely that he ever will hear anything. Mayweather still has other revenue streams going for him, such as his exhibition matches against kickboxers, and he doesn’t need to take a risky fight against Alvarez.
The boxing world still wants to see Canelo and Mayweather fight each other, even though Floyd has been inactive since 2015 in terms of fights against real life boxers.
“There’s a lot of money that can be made,” De La Hoya said about a rematch between Mayweather and Canelo. “Look, he’s retired, but he wants to come back. there’s a lot of money to be made. So the way you should have picked the phone to make the fight with Ryan [Garcia]. Pick up the phone and make the fight with Canelo. It’s as easy as that,” De La Hoya said.
This would be a bad career move by Canelo to fight Mayweather. Canelo doesn’t need to get caught up in fighting exhibition matches at this point in his career, and Mayweather would almost surely want the fight not to count on his unbeaten 50-0 record.
There’s definitely money to be made by Mayweather and Canelo in a rematch, but probably nowhere close to figure that De La Hoya throwing around. $1.5 billion sounds unbelievable. The Mayweather-Canelo rematch will make good money, but it’s not likely to make anywhere close to $1.5 billio. The newer boxing fans only know Mayweather from his MMA fights, and they’re not going to want to pay to see him get beaten up by Canelo. The hardcore boxing fans also will see the Mayweather vs. Canelo II rematch as money grab, and will shy away from it. If Mayweather was still fighting, and still relevant championship level fighter, the fans would want to see him and Canelo fight again. Not now though. It’s too late in the game, and Mayweather is now seen as a guy that fights exhibition matches against MMA fighters. It’s hard to take him seriously anymore. De La Hoya might as well be calling out the retired fighters Bernard Hopkins or Roy Jones Jr. for a fight against Canelo. Hopkins would likely give Canelo more problems than Mayweather can at this point.
Getting Mayweather to agree to this fight against Canelo might be like pulling teeth. The problem is, as long Mayweather can make money fighting kickboxers like Tenshin Nasukawa, he’s probably not going to want to risk getting knocked out by Canelo Alvarez or any other boxer.
Canelo has a serious fight coming up against IBF middleweight champion Danny Jacobs on May 4 on DAZN that he needs to win. A victory for Canelo, 28, will send him in the direction of either WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade or a third fight with Gennady Golovkin. Either of those of matches will make his boxing fans happy, and bring in subscribers on DAZN, which is what it’s all about.