Arum and Oscar Say They Want Canelo vs Chavez Jr, But Can It Be Done?

One fight that gets talked about a lot is a potential Mexican superfight between Saul "Canelo" Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, and now some of that talk is coming from the promoters of the two fighters.

Alvarez (37-0-1, 27 KO) is fresh off of a dominant win over Ryan Rhodes on June 18, while Chavez (43-0-1, 30 KO) defeated Sebastian Zbik in his June 4 HBO debut. Both fighters appear to be factors in HBO's boxing programming going forward, both are young, both are unbeaten, and both are major stars south of the border, with their American fanbases picking up real steam, too.

Late Saturday night, Alvarez's promoter Oscar de la Hoya said this:

Chavez, of course, now fights at 160 pounds, where he holds the WBC title. Alvarez holds the WBC belt at 154. There was a lot of talk about Chavez's decision to move up to 160 full-time in 2009. In his middleweight debut, Chavez outpointed Troy Rowland in a dreadful fight on the Pacquiao vs Cotto card, then failed a post-fight drug test, testing positive for a diuretic, with the result of the bout changed to a no contest.

After the drug test fiasco, the WBC made a show of rallying around the poor Chavez, talking about getting him the best doctors and nutritionists to ensure he fights at the proper weight, and wouldn't have to do things like fool about with diuretics out of desperation anymore, or whatever.

Point is, Chavez is not going back to 154. He's 25 years old, has a belt at 160, and in the ring against Zbik, weighed 185 pounds on the unofficial HBO scales. 185 pounds! Not draining himself to take a potential fight with Canelo should never be looked at as Chavez or his team "ducking" that fight. Let's be clear about that. Chavez is not a junior middleweight anymore and to try and cut the extra six pounds would be foolish.

Today, Chavez's promoter Bob Arum told Kevin Iole he's also in favor of the fight:

Arum, of course, is certainly of the mindset that Canelo should come up in weight rather than Chavez going down. And Alvarez is surely not going to move up to 160 until late 2012 at the earliest. He's getting very strong at a full 154 now, but it wasn't that long ago that he was basically still fighting as a welterweight, or a pound or two over, and even in March they had a 150-pound catchweight against Matthew Hatton, which Alvarez couldn't quite make, but it was there. His fight with Rhodes was his first with a full 154-pound limit.

Beyond all of the weight stuff and the fact that recent nice talk aside, Top Rank and Golden Boy still aren't co-promoting, there would also be the issue of Mexican TV rights, as the two fight on rival networks in Mexico.

In other words, don't look for this to happen in the near future. There's almost nothing about the matchup that actually points to getting the fight done. When it does happen, and I'm sure it will someday, it can and should make a lot of money, though.