Golden Boy promoter Oscar De La Hoya’s company had a successful Saturday night, with Canelo Alvarez beating Sergey Kovalev to win the WBO light heavyweight title, plus wins for Golden Boy fighters Ryan Garcia, Seniesa Estrada, and Blair Cobbs on the main undercard portion of the show.
De La Hoya was particularly excited about Canelo Alvarez, and made his case to the media for the 29-year-old Mexican fighter to be crowned boxing’s pound-for-pound king.
“Canelo is a fighter who will continue to prove everyone wrong. I have to admit, at times, he proves me wrong,” De La Hoya said. “That’s who Canelo is. Canelo is a fighter who is special, and therefore we must appreciate, we must acknowledge that he is not only one of the best, if not the best, Mexican fighter, but he is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world today.
“We have to give him that acknowledgement. We have to understand that Canelo moved two weight divisions to fight at light heavyweight. You can’t tell me that (Terence) Crawford or (Vasiliy) Lomachenko or anybody else in boxing is daring to be great like Canelo.
“Is anybody moving up in weight class? Is anybody unifying titles? No, Canelo is. Because he wants to be great, he wants to leave a legacy is. That’s what legends do, leave a legacy and take risks. If you want to become a great fighter, you have to take risks. That’s exactly what Canelo did tonight. Yes, it was difficult, but he did a hell of a job.”
It’s worth noting that both Crawford and Lomachenko are three-division champions and have both unified titles, including Crawford once being undisputed at 140 pounds, and that neither of them claim to have been crowned in a division where they’ve only won a secondary WBA “world” title, as Canelo has at 168 pounds.