Saul Alvarez, right, attempting to rally against Floyd Mayweather during his majority-decision loss last weekend in Las Vegas (Photo: Naoki Fukuda)
By Chris Robinson
According to a report from Elisinio Castillo at BoxingScene.com, former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. doesn’t appear to be sold on the popularity of his countryman and rival Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez.
The former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion, Alvarez is coming off of a one-sided loss at the hands of Floyd Mayweather on Sept. 14. It was recently revealed that the Showtime pay per view event generated an estimated 2.2 million purchases while becoming the highest-grossing event in boxing history, with revenue nearing $150 million.
While many have attributed a large portion of those numbers towards Alvarez’s popularity, Chavez disagrees.
“Canelo never scored big numbers with the events organized by HBO,” stated Chavez. “His highest rating was 1.0 while my fight against Marco Antonio Rubio had an audience of 1.9. Canelo is only popular in Mexico and mostly because of the great support he has from [Televisa].”
As far as the mistakes he made against Mayweather, Chavez feels that Canelo needed to press the issue a bit more.
“He needed to go forward, take risks,” said Chavez. “Because, at times he was slow, perhaps because of the pounds that he put on between the day of the weigh-in and the moment of the fight.”
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Chris Robinson can be reached at Trimond@aol.com