Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports is reporting that Floyd Mayweather is expected to announce his opponent for May 5 at his hearing with the Nevada State Athletic Commission later today. Floyd will be going through the typical NSAC dog and pony show answering questions to get his license reinstated which everyone on Earth knows will happen, but Nevada loves making a show of these things.
As for the announcement, we pretty much know all the involved names here. There's an outside chance that it could be Miguel Cotto, a pretty good chance it could be Saul "Canelo" Alvarez and Robert Guerrero is still out there as a dark horse possibility. We can also add Victor Ortiz to the mix with his fight with Andre Berto being canceled after Berto ruptured his bicep.
Iole is still leaning toward Canelo, and that's where I think the smart money is. But there was talk that Alvarez was pricing himself out of the fight a bit. And if they were able to get a deal done quickly enough with Ortiz in the wake of the Berto injury, I think that is a real possibility. Ortiz will have much less leverage to get a good sized piece of the pie and there is a story to be told with the rematch.
Yesterday a poll was posted here on Bad Left Hook asking if people would pay for a rematch between Mayweather and Ortiz and while it's currently at 56% no, my experience over years of doing this is that people usually end up buying the "big fights" that they say they won't more often than not.
As for Canelo, his team says he is ready and it certainly is the bigger fight. It's all about if a deal was able to be worked out that made everyone happy.