Canelo Alvarez isn’t letting on about timeframe of possible fight with Gennady Golovkin
Canelo Alvarez lands a left hook against Miguel Cotto during their WBC middleweight fight on Saturday night in Las Vegas.
Saul “Canelo” Alvarez has two weeks before the deadline arrives for an important decision, so why tip his hand so soon after his fists were flying?
Mexico’s Alvarez won the World Boxing Council middleweight championship Saturday with a unanimous-decision victory over Puerto Rico’s former four-division world champion Miguel Cotto at Mandalay Bay.
A stipulation that allowed the fight to happen was that the winner had 15 days after the fight to begin negotiations with Gennady Golovkin, the WBC’s mandatory No. 1 contender and holder of the World Boxing Assn. and International Boxing Federation middleweight belts.
For Alvarez, 25, and his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions, Saturday wasn’t the night to commit to fighting the unbeaten Golovkin, has knocked out 20 opponents in succession.
It was instead an evening to rejoice.
When Alvarez (46-1-1) was pressed after the fight about what he’ll do next, he simply flexed his muscles.
“Canelo is the guy who’s on top of the world now,” De La Hoya said. “It’s huge, but it’s much bigger than Golden Boy Promotions. It’s huge for boxing, for our sport, to give fans the fights they want to see.
“I was crossing my fingers every single minute of every round. People say, ‘Why’d you put him against that tough guy?’ Because I wanted to see him fight the best.”
Cotto (40-5), who lost 117-111, 119-109 and 118-110 on the judges’ cards, refused to attend a postfight news conference. His reply to the scoring was “Wow!”
The Puerto Rican, who is 35 and might retire, lost the middleweight title even before the bout with Alvarez for refusing to pay a $300,000 sanctioning fee to the WBC.
“If it’s over, it’s over,” trainer Freddie Roach said. “We will have that talk.”
Roach contended that by out-jabbing Alvarez, 54-37, and boxing sharply in segments, he believed the veteran fighter did enough to win the bout. Alvarez connected on 118 power punches to Cotto’s 75.
What rounds did Roach dispute?
“I don’t keep a scorecard in my pocket,” he said.
Alvarez, and De La Hoya, are keeping track of the Mexican boxer’s drawing power.
The bout sold out Mandalay Bay’s 11,274 seats and De La Hoya expects in excess of 1 million pay-per-view buys for a victory that showed Alvarez’s progress from a 2013 loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. and a narrow split-decision victory over Erislandy Lara last year.
“I wanted to leave no doubt, a clear victory,” Alvarez said. “I feel like a more complete fighter, a more solid fighter and … those other fights prepared me for this moment. I’m ready.”
Obstacles for an immediate fight with Golovkin are Alvarez’s hesitation to agree to fight at a 160-pound limit after Saturday’s 155-pound catchweight fight, and a concern that Golovkin, after drawing only 150,000 pay-per-view buys in October, is still building his brand.
Alvarez weighed 163 pounds less than a month before the Cotto fight and went over 160 after the weigh-in.
“I feel really strong at this weight,” Alvarez said in reference to 155 pounds. “This is my weight class. Golovkin … I have respect for him. I’m not afraid of anybody.”
Mauricio Sulaiman, president of the WBC, said it’s possible another deal like the one that got Golovkin to step aside for Alvarez-Cotto could be struck between the fighters, allowing Alvarez to postpone a Golovkin bout and retain the middleweight belt.
“If they reach an agreement, it’s absolutely without a problem,” Sulaiman said. “If they find a way to make [the fight] bigger for themselves, we are supportive of those agreements that aren’t hurting a fighter with rights. It’s perfectly acceptable.”
De La Hoya said that an Alvarez-Golovkin matchup will happen.
“Look, I can take a page from my mentor Bob Arum’s book and say, ‘Well, you’ve got to let it marinate,’ or I can go and say, ‘Let’s go! Let’s do it!’
“Let me talk to my team, let me talk to ‘Canelo,’ discuss how he’s feeling … we don’t know, we’ll see.
“The bottom line is we have ‘the guy.’ We have ‘the guy’ for many years, and it’s going to be a lot of fun putting together some big fights. We haven’t even seen the best of ‘Canelo’ yet.”
De La Hoya announced after the bout that Alvarez plans to fight on major Mexican holiday weekends in May and September.
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