Richard Schaefer, the CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, says that he is putting together some scenarios for Floyd Mayweather’s next fight, the most preferable of which is a fight with his own fighter, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, which he would like to promote in September.
As Schaefer expressed to ESPN, his #1 priority is putting Mayweather and Alvarez into the ring together, and he is “crunching numbers” to find ways to make that happen that would be satisfactory to all.
Previously, Oscar De La Hoya, Schaefer’s boss at Golden Boy, had told Alvarez that he would make sure he would headline card in September, which September 14 targeted, since it would be held in conjunction with Mexican Independence Day. That was after Alvarez unified junior middleweight (154-pound) titles with a decision win over Austin Trout.
If Alvarez cannot come to an agreement with Mayweather, Miguel Cotto may be approached to provide the opposition for a pay-per-view bout. However, Mayweather may decide that he wants to fight on the date in question, but not against Alvarez, in which case Golden Boy, which has provided promotion-for-hire for each of Mayweather’s last seven fights, may have to change its plans.
Golden Boy’s fighter, Robert Guerrero, was Mayweather’s opponent last Saturday, and lost a lopsided 12-round decision in which he was, in the view of many, non-competitive. Showtime, which recently entered into a record-breaking contract with Mayweather and may have gotten close to breaking even if reports of pay-per-view buys of slightly over a million are correct, may be looking to make a bigger PPV impact, which would mean pressuring him to fight Alvarez, or they may allow Mayweather once again to hand-pick an opponent, which could mean somebody else. Schaefer has insisted that if Mayweather is indeed going to fight Alvarez, all the arrangements need to be in place in the next few weeks in order to get the ball rolling for September.
Simply because Schaefer is putting together some numbers and may have been in contact with the Mayweather camp, but that doesn’t necessarily constitute a negotiation. And since Golden Boy does not have Mayweather under contract, it does not get to make the decision on opponents. Plus, Mayweather is headstrong, and has been known to sign a contract only when he’s ready.
Schaefer says “Floyd has never turned down an opponent.” Some people may argue with such a thing, but they would probably not offer the opinion that Mayweather was ducking Alvarez. There are subtleties to boxing negotiations, and one of the things that has to be worked out is the weight at which the fight will be contested. Alvarez deserves to be rated at the top of the heap when it comes to 154-pounders, and while Mayweather won a title at that level when he beat Cotto last May, it’s likely he’d prefer to campaign at a lower weight, as he did against Guerrero, as he ran his career record to 44-0. So the parties might have to find a “catchweight” that is in between those two classes.
There is also the possibility that Mayweather would like to take a fight that gives him another payday before taking what observers might consider to be more of a risk with the undefeated Alvarez. By the same token, if the fight against Guerrero drew about a million paid subscribers, the forecast for a Floyd-Canelo bout, with Alvarez’s popularity in the Latin community a factor, could soar over 1.5 million.