By Dan Ambrose: It’s looking like WBO junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez could be fighting WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (23-0, 12 KOs) by May of 2017 on Cinco de Mayo weekend. Canelo (48-1-1, 34 KOs) isn’t ranked in the top 15 at 160, but it doesn’t matter, because he recently captured the World Boxing Organization154lb title with a 9th round knockout over Liam Smith last September.
By capturing the WBO junior middleweight title, it enables Canelo to become the mandatory challenger to Saunders despite the fact that he’s not ranked at all in the WBO’s top 15 ranking at middleweight.