By Bill Phanco: WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will be attending this Saturday’s fight between Miguel Cotto and WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout at Madison Square Garden with the hopes of facing Cotto if he wins the fight. That’s the opponent that Alvarez badly wants, but he may not get him of Trout has something to say about it.
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer said this to RingTV about a Trout victory over Cotto: “I think we have to see what fashion in which Trout wins, and then we’ll make an assessment on it, and I will have to talk with Canelo.”
In other words, Alvarez may not fight Trout if he beats Cotto. I suspect that it doesn’t matter how good or bad Trout looks in the fight. If he beats Cotto, I don’t see Golden Boy allowing Alvarez to take the fight with Trout, because he’s all wrong for their young, flat-footed, easy to hit champion Alvarez. If you look at the types of fighters that they’ve been putting in with Alvarez – slow, older, stationary and smaller fighters – it’s clear that Trout is not the ideal opponent. In fact, Trout is the opposite of the types of guys that Golden Boy has fed to Alvarez, which is why I don’t see Trout getting the fight even if he destroys Cotto.
By Paul Grunich, photo by Robert Tibuni – WBA World junior middleweight champion
By Rob Smith: For what it’s worth, Manny Pacquiao sees Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) as coming out on top against WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) on December 1st at Madison Square Garden, in New York. Pacquiao knows Cotto pretty well from having trounced him in a 12th round knockout back in 2009.
By Rob Smith: Boxing star
By Michael Collins: Former WBA World junior middleweight champion