Former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez has a lot of people with HBO and Golden Boy Promotions excited about his potential in the sport after he recently signed a 3-year, 3 fight deal with HBO this week. HBO Sports president Ken Hershman believes that he’s got a fighter who will be a huge success for his network with his big fights.
Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya believes that Canelo will become boxing. In other words, Canelo will rise up to the biggest star in the sport.
“Canelo wants to make history. He wants to be the face [of boxing], and he saw the perfect opportunity at HBO where he will be boxing,” De La Hoya said to RingTV.com. He will be the guy.”
If Canelo, 24, is indeed going to be the guy that takes over the sport after guys like Miguel Cotto, Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao all retire, then his fans may need to overlook an occasional loss or controversial win on his part because Canelo hasn’t shown the kind of talent yet to where he can just go out and dominate everyone he faces from the 147 to 160 pound divisions.
Canelo would likely lose to Gennady Golovkin if that fight is made in the near future, and we don’t know what’s going to happen with Canelo in his fight proposed fight against Miguel Cotto. Canelo could lose that one as well, you never know. Canelo has already lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr, and he looked poor against Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara.
“I think the world is his [Canelo] oyster, and we’re behind him 100 percent,” said Hershman. “He’s 24 and he has so much upside. It’s going to be an exciting ride that we go through.”
Hopefully, Hershman and HBO have realistic expectations from Canelo, because he very could be another Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in terms of him beating some guys and losing to others. What we don’t want to see is Canelo taking a loss and then being put on a steady diet of mediocre opposition in order to keep him winning.
