Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) will be resting his injured ankle for the next 6 weeks, says his promoter Oscar De La Hoya. Canelo has a muscle strain that has lingered for the past 3 months since before his last fight against Erislandy Lara, says De La Hoya. Last Monday, Golden Boy Promotions announced that Canelo’s December 6th fight against former IBF welterweight champion Joshua Clottey was cancelled due to Canelo’s ankle injury.
Instead of rescheduling it, De La Hoya says Canelo will probably stay out of the ring until next May and then look to fight Miguel Cotto in an HBO pay-per-view bout. This is the fight that De La Hoya and Canelo both want. It’s the biggest fight in boxing right now other than Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Manny Pacquiao.
“The good news is that there is nothing broken, nothing torn. He has, like, a muscle strain,” De La Hoya said about Canelo’s ankle injury to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “We never officially announced the Dec. 6 fight, and now we have to regroup in the next few days or the next few weeks and see what we’re going to do, but we will pursue what Canelo has wanted, and that is to fight on Cinco de Mayo [weekend].”
Canelo badly wants the fight against Cotto on Cinco de Mayo weekend in May of 2015, and that’s going to be the probable next fight for the red-haired Mexican star unless Golden Boy can’t negotiate the fight or if his ankle injury continues to give him problems. I must admit, three months is a long, long time for a muscle strain to be lingering especially for someone as young as Canelo.
Hopefully this isn’t going to be a chronic deal with Canelo’s ankle otherwise he’s going to need to learn how to fight through the pain and just deal with it unless he wants to sit out of the ring for ages hoping that it’ll maybe heal some day in the future.
“Going right to a Cotto fight is a big possibility,” De La Hoya said. “I hear in Canelo’s voice the enthusiasm about fighting on Cinco de Mayo weekend.”
Canelo really wants the Cotto fight something fierce. The logical question is will Canelo, if he beats Cotto, choose to hold onto the WBC middleweight title that he wins from him or will he immediately vacate the strap. If Canelo chooses to keep the WBC title then he’s going to likely need to fight Gennady Golovkin, because he’s fighting WBC interim 160 pound champion Marco Antonio Rubio on October 18th. If Golovkin wins that fight then he’ll be the WBC middleweight mandatory challenger for Cotto.
If Canelo beats Cotto, then Golovkin becomes his problem. I’m not sure that Golden Boy will be excited at seeing Golovkin systematically take Canelo apart worse than Floyd Mayweather Jr did last year in September. With De La Hoya saying Canelo is going to be the face of boxing, it might not look too good him getting blown apart by Golovkin on HBO pay-per-view.
