Golden Boy Promotions biggest star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez is meeting with HBO President of Sports Ken Hershman and Golden Boy president Oscar De La Hoya today to sign a new contract that will return the red-haired Canelo to HBO for an unspecified amount of fights. Canelo was previous with HBO before leaving for Showtime for his last 5 fights.
With Canelo coming back to HBO, it brings them a big star that can potentially take over for Manny Pacquiao when he eventually walks away from the sport or gets too old to bring in the PPV numbers like he used to.
Along with Canelo’s signing with HBO to be announced today, Canelo’s December 6th fight against Joshua Clottey is expected to be announced as well. The Canelo-Clottey fight will be taking place at the Alamadome in San Antonio, Texas. It’s not a great fight, to be sure, but it gives Canelo a sure thing win so that he can move forward afterwards and face WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in their expected catch-weight fight at 155 pounds next year in May on Cinco de Mayo.
Getting Canelo will definitely help HBO in term of future ratings. Canelo is seen as the future of the sport, and as long as he’s matched carefully, he should be able to beat most of his opponents without any problems. He didn’t much of a hit with his loss to Mayweather Jr last year.
Fans seem to like Canelo win or lose. He’s got that kind connection with his fans. If Golden Boy can be extra careful with Canelo in the future by keeping him away from guys that would possibly beat him like Gennady Golovkin and Demetrius Andrade, he should be able to become as big a star ad Mayweather and Pacquiao.
Canelo has fought twice in 2014 on pay-per-view against Erislandy Lara and Alfredo Angulo. Neither fight did all that well on Showtime, but he didn’t have the right opponents obviously and Showtime didn’t have a big enough subscription to bring the fans in. Those same fights likely would have done much better numbers had they been televised on HBO PPV.
