By Joe Hughes – Boxing News online columnist
SAUL ‘CANELO’ ALVAREZ returns this weekend against Puerto Rican Edgar Berlanga.
It’s a fight no one outside of Team Berlanga were particularly clamouring to see prior to it being announced. It’ll most likely be another straight forward victory for the Mexican who defends his three super-middleweight titles.
Berlanga hasn’t fought at anywhere near the level that Alvarez has and on paper lacks the big fight experience to be a serious threat to Canelo. The champion’s last few matchups have been pretty straight forward for him but his performances have not been quite at the level they were in the mid to late 2010’s when he moved from super-welterweight to light-heavyweight.
Canelo is not the force he was when he first unified the super-middleweight division and father time eventually catches up to everyone. The great Mexican will eventually fall into those clutches but the question is when?
There are no really big fights left for him at 168lbs now David Benavidez has moved up to light-heavyweight. So, will he continue defending his titles as many times as he can or will he move up and take another shot at 175lbs where he has one win and one defeat?
A match up against the winner of Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev is something the ambitious Alvarez could target if he comes though this weekend. He would be a big underdog against either, he’s already lost to Bivol, but it may be the last chance for one of boxing’s biggest stars of the last decade to be involved in a matchup the magnitude of which would befit his career.
The amateur boxing club I help coach at, Paddy John’s ABC, have their first show of the season on Saturday, September 21.
I’m the club’s match maker so I’ve been spending a lot of time recently trying to arrange the fight card. It’s a pretty frustrating task at times and some of the matchups seem to change on nearly a daily basis. We have a few boxers that can be pretty hard to match but fingers crossed I can get them something.
