Former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) and Alfredo Angulo (22-3, 18 KO’s) have both signed for their March 8th fight a the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The contracts were inked today and the fight is all set for Showtime pay-per-view. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is confident that it’ll be a PPV success due to the 23-year-old Canelo’s huge popularity in the U.S.
“The fight is done,” Schaefer said to ESPN. “Signed, sealed and delivered. Two of the most exciting fighters in the sport and it will be a toe-to-toe battle. That is what we are calling the card, ‘Toe-to-Toe.'”
The undercard has some good fights in Cristian Mijares facing WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz, Omar Figueroa facing Canelo’s older brother Ricardo Alvarez and Nihito Arakawa taking on Jorge Linares. Those are three very solid fights, and it definitely makes the fight card PPV worthy.
The negative about the card is that both Canelo and Angulo are coming off of defeats. Canelo lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr. last September; while Angulo was beaten by Erislandy Lara by a 10th round TKO last June. Canelo tried his best, but he just wasn’t ready for a fighter like Mayweather at this early stage in his career. It was too much of an upgrade from Canelo’s last opponent Austin Trout. Canelo tried to box with Mayweather for the first half of the fight, but that didn’t work.
When he started trying to slug with Mayweather in the 2nd half of the fight, it was too late because Mayweather had already built up a wide lead and he was able to use his feet to stay out of the way of Canelo’s big shots. Angulo suffered an eye injury in his fight with Lara in which his orbital bone was damaged. However, he’s healed up from the injury and is ready to go. Angulo would have had a good chance of beating Lara if not for the eye injury, because he had knocked him down twice and was wearing him down with body shots.
Canelo will need to use movement against Angulo if he wants to get out of this fight in one piece, because he hits too hard and he can take a lot of punishment. We don’t know yet how good Canelo’s chin is. Angulo will definitely give us a clear picture of how good of a punch Canelo can take by the time their fight is over on March 8th.