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Oscar De La Hoya believes Canelo Alvarez has nothing to gain from his upcoming fight.
Alvarez defends his 168-pound titles against super welterweight champion Jermell Charlo in a fight taking place Sept. 30 in Las Vegas.
The announcement came as a surprise to everyone as Alvarez was expected to fight Charlo's elder brother Jermall, who competes one weight class below in the middleweight division.
Instead, the Mexican superstar will now fight the younger (and slightly smaller) Charlo who regularly competes two divisions below at 154 pounds and as far as De La Hoya is concerned, it's a win-win for the American even if he ends up suffering just his second career defeat.
Alvarez, meanwhile, gains nothing — even if he ended up fighting and beating Jermall.
“From my expertise’s opinion…moving up two weight classes—I mean, first of all, I take my hat off to Charlo for doing that,” De La Hoya told FightHubTV (via Boxing Scene). “I understand that it’s a great payday for him and obviously he took that into consideration when making that decision to fight Canelo.
“But it’s going to be a tough task. I mean two weight divisions is historical, if he wins, and two weight divisions, he if he loses, he has the perfect excuse. ‘Hey, I moved up two weight divisions.’ So, it’s a win-win for Charlo, I believe. But I don’t think Canelo wins anything by beating a Charlo.”
Of course, Alvarez is still making plenty of money as this fight is the first of his new three-fight deal with PBC while it will be a potential title defense against a well-known American name.
That said, De La Hoya believes it will be perceived more as a tune-up fight for someone like David Benavidez more than anything else.
“It doesn’t make him look bad. … I just think that it’s not a win-win for Canelo, that’s it,” De La Hoya added. “It’s almost kind of like a ‘alright, lemme win this fight and let’s sharpen up the tools so I can face Benavidez or I can face, you know, the tougher guys.’”
De La Hoya makes a good point as a large majority of the boxing world would have much preferred Alvarez fought Benavidez rather than Charlo where the result appears to be a foregone conclusion.
However, not everyone is counting Charlo out.