Raise your hand if you think Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, the reigning lineal and WBC middleweight champion, is a cherry picker.
If you raised your hand, quickly and quietly gather your belongings and leave.
The whole premise of the argument is—frankly—plain ridiculous.
Canelo’s promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, shocked the boxing world (which isn’t easy to do these days) with a surprising announcement that the cinnamon-haired sensation will defend his middleweight crown against former junior welterweight titlist Amir Khan May 7 on HBO pay-per-view.
You could almost feel the atmospheric disturbances caused by so many jaws dropping to the floor at the same time. There was no advance, no warning. It came literally out of the blue.
In boxing, we’re used to hearing things, knowing things, even if they're rumors, before they ever hit the public eye, and, let me tell you, this announcement had many a good boxing person thoroughly stumped.
And it had others angry, ready to smear Canelo with the dreaded label of cherry picker, a not-so-subtle scarlet letter that implies a fighter avoids tough challenges in favor of carefully selected opponents he knows he can beat.
“With all due respect, Canelo's fight is an embarrassment to the middleweight division. A 140 [pounder] fighting at that weight [of 155]. It dishonors boxing. We all know who wins,” said fellow Mexican fighter Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., per Miguel Rivera of Boxing Scene.
Let's ignore that Chavez Jr. is the last guy in the sport who should say anything about weight differences after the farce of a fight he put on with Marcos Reyes last year.
Fighthype.com (h/t Boxing News 24) posted similar comments from former world champion and Showtime boxing analyst Paulie Malignaggi, who likewise panned the fight as a risk due to the size difference.
“It’s a tough situation to win and you can get hurt. From Canelo’s standpoint, it’s not much of a risk of a fight. Just because you put two big names in with one another doesn’t mean they should be fighting each other because they’re in vastly different weight classes,” Malignaggi said.
“Canelo, already being a big puncher, and now he’s fighting a smaller guy. I think his punching power can be even more devastating.”
Those criticisms are well within the bounds of acceptability.
Neither guy is wrong.
Even this guy had some concerns about the ability of Khan to be competitive against Canelo:
But it’s a stretch to take this one single fight as evidence that Canelo, or his people, are steering their man to stardom by taking the path of least resistance. He’s never shown that propensity in the past.
Canelo has gone on record, several times, including to Bleacher Report, about his desire to build his star on the backs of the toughest challenges around. He’s proved that to be more than words with a string of fights that easily rivals (or bests) that of any fighter in the business today.
Beginning in April 2013, Canelo has gone Austin Trout, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Alfredo Angulo, Erislandy Lara, James Kirkland and Miguel Cotto, back to back to back and so on.
He told Bleacher Report prior to his 2014 fight with Lara:
“I’ve always wanted to fight the best and I believe that Lara is one of the most, if not the most, dangerous fighters at 154 [pounds]. My goal is to give the fans what they want to see, and that’s the best fights. The best fighting the best. And that’s my philosophy. That’s what I want to do.”
Khan obviously has some problems as an opponent.
He’s never weighed in at more than 147 pounds for a bout and spent much of his career fighting at 140 or below. He’s been stopped like a bad habit by two punchers that don’t rate anywhere near Canelo’s orbit on the concussive scale of punching power.
But what Khan provides for Canelo is a massive event that—hopefully—builds hype for a showdown between the Mexican champion and current unified 160-pound titlist, and boxing’s equivalent of an atomic blast, Gennady Golovkin, in the fall.
And it’s still better than trying to sell either Willie Monroe Jr. or Gabriel Rosado (both of whom were floated) as PPV opponents worthy of fans spending their hard-earned cash.
Now that would be a cherry pick and a bit of an insult.