By Dan Ambrose: If you were hoping to see former WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout vs. Erislandy Lara on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight card on September 14th, you can forget it. It’s not happening, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. He’s saying that Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer isn’t considering that fight for the Mayweather-Canelo undercard.
Rafael said in his chat today, “That fight [Trout-Lara] is not being added to the card, according to Richard Schaefer. He told me it is not even a fight for which he has any discussion for whatsoever with either side. He said it merely one fight that was thought up at the office but there has been no real conversation about making it at this point.”
That’s not surprising because Trout made Canelo look bad in their fight last April in losing by a controversial 12 round unanimous decision in San Antonio, Texas. Having Trout on the card would be a reminder of that fight and I think the last thing that Canelo – and Golden Boy – needs is a reminder of how poorly Canelo looked in that fight, in addition to the controversial decision that was handed down by the three judges working the fight.
It would have been tough finding the money to get these guys on the September 14th fight card anyway because Golden Boy just added the Danny Garcia – Lucas Matthysse fight as the co-feature yesterday, and that fight is going to suck up a ton of money that Golden Boy could have used to find other fights.
Instead of spreading all the money out over the entire undercard, you’ve got one fight taking up a lot of cash with Garcia-Matthysse.
If the Trout-Lara fight does take place it’ll be something that takes place at another point in the future, perhaps on HBO. Lara wants the fight, and Trout would likely be game as well if there was a title on the line. Trout wants to get a rematch with Canelo or get a shot at one of the other junior middleweight champions like Ishe Smith.
Comments are closed.