By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s 4-city press tour with Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KO’s) will kickoff tomorrow [Tuesday, May 6th], in Los Angeles, California at the El Pueblo Historical Monument. From there, Canelo and Lara’s tour will travel to San Antonio, Texas on May 7th, New York City on May 8th, and then wrap up the tour on May 9th in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Canelo, 23, won’t be fighting for Lara’s WBA 154lb title, because Canelo doesn’t recognize Lara as the top WBA champion in that weight class. Floyd Mayweather Jr, who easily beat Canelo last September, is also one of the WBA junior middleweight champions and the guy that is considered to be the overall champ.
The Canelo-Lara fight will be taking place on July 12th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight will be televised on Showtime pay-per-view. Compared to Canelo’s previous fight against Alfredo Angulo, which took place last March, the Canelo vs. Lara fight is a much, much more worthy fight for PPV than the Canelo-Angulo mismatch.
It was surprising and more than a little disappointing that Canelo asked boxing fans to pay to see him beat up the badly over-matched Angulo because it was not a competitive fight and the fans didn’t get much for their hard earned money in seeing that horrible mismatch. Canelo might as well have brought Austin Trout back for a badly needed rematch rather than wasting his time fighting Angulo. Canelo struggled badly in beating Trout last year in April by a 12 round decision in San Antonio. This was a fight where the judges’ scoring didn’t fit with the fight that took place in the ring, as Canelo was given a wide victory by two of the judges.
This is a very important fight for Canelo, because he looked terrible against Mayweather and Trout, and Lara can do a lot of the same things that Mayweather did against Canelo in terms of making him miss and pot shotting him all night. A loss for Cnaelo in this fight will force Golden Boy Promotions to be a lot more careful in the kinds of opponents they match Canelo up against in the future, as he doesn’t seem to do well against fighters that can box. Canelo excels against sluggers with little hand speed or ability to move around the ring. It could be that Golden Boy will need to go back to matching Canelo exclusively against those types of fighters in order for him to continue to succeed in the junior middleweight division.
Golden Boy needs to try and match Canelo up against Manny Pacquiao as quick as possible before Canelo gets beaten again and starts to lose the fans.
Here is the Canelo-Lara press tour dates and locations:
May 6th at 1 p.m. PT – Los Angeles
El Pueblo Historical Monument
424 North Main Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
May 7th at 1 p.m. CT – San Antonio, Texas
Downtown Historic Market Square
514 West Commerce Street
San Antonio, TX 78207
May 8th at 1:30 p.m. ET – New York City
Hard Rock Times Square
1501 Broadway (Between 43rd & 44th Street)
New York, NY 10036
May 9th at 1 p.m. AST – San Juan, Peurto Rico
The Ritz-Carlton, San Juan
6961 Avenue of the Gobernadores
Carolina, Puerto Rico 00979
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