Mayweather, Alvarez build Big Apple hype for Sept. 14 megafight
NEW YORK — Don’t expect Floyd Mayweather Jr. to try to get inside the head of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez leading up to their Sept. 14 megafight at the MGM Grand Garden.
“Why trash talk?” Mayweather asked rhetorically from Times Square on Monday, where the fighters’ 11-city, nine-day promotional tour began. “He’s not going to understand what I’m saying anyway.”
The 36-year-old Mayweather, 44-0 with 26 knockouts, is coming off one of his most impressive performances. On May 4, following a layoff of one year — 60 days of which were spent in jail — he gave Robert Guerrero a boxing lesson in winning a 12-round unanimous decision. Mayweather said he expects to be even better Sept. 14.
“I’ve watched the fight, and there’s always room for improvement. I’m my toughest critic,” said Mayweather, who again will employ his father Floyd Sr. as chief trainer while utilizing his uncle Roger as well.
Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KOs) said he expects Mayweather to be better, but also stressed that Mayweather will be fighting a better fighter than Guerrero.
“Guerrero didn’t have a plan when he fought Floyd,” Alvarez said through an translator. “I’ll have a Plan A, B and C. To beat Floyd, you have to have a smart game plan and we will have a good plan for Sept. 14.”
Part of that plan is to pick Oscar De La Hoya’s brain. De La Hoya lost a split decision to Mayweather when they fought in 2007, and the president of Golden Boy Promotions said the 22-year-old Alvarez has what it takes to beat Mayweather.
“Youth is on his side,” De La Hoya said. “Another advantage he has is his intelligence. He’s a very smart fighter, and people also tend to underestimate his speed.
“He also doesn’t have a torn left rotator cuff like I did. But I have three letters I’m going to keep repeating to him — J-A-B.”
Mayweather wasn’t about to shortchange Alvarez as a fighter. After all, they’ve got a lot of pay-per-view buys to sell for their meeting on Showtime. Mayweather is an astute enough businessman not to brag about a potential mismatch, which might discourage would-be buyers.
“He’s a good, young champion,” Mayweather, the WBA junior middleweight champion and WBC welterweight champ, said of Alvarez, the WBC junior middleweight champ who defeated Austin Trout on April 20 in his most recent fight. “Obviously, he’s done something so far.”
But that doesn’t mean Mayweather is in awe of Alvarez and what he’s accomplished.
“He’s a young champion; I have a lot more experience,” Mayweather said. “I’ve been a world champion the last 16 years. I can adjust and adapt to any situation. Whatever the best thing they do, I can do better.”
The fight will be held at a catchweight of 152 pounds, and Alvarez would have preferred to have the fight at 154. But he said he’ll make weight and it won’t be an issue.
“That’s the way it was negotiated,” he said. “That’s how I had to get the fight, so I accepted it.”
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency will handle the random drug testing leading up to the fight. Alvarez, from Guadalajara, Mexico, will train in Big Bear, Calif., so reaching him shouldn’t be an issue for USADA. Mayweather will train in his Las Vegas gym off Spring Mountain Road.
“It will be good for me to be in California,” Alvarez said. “No distractions. We’ll have good sparring partners to work with — mostly guys my size, but we’ll have some smaller guys, too. I’m excited.”
Tickets for the fight, priced from $350 to $2,000 plus applicable fees, go on sale at 10 a.m. today at Ticketmaster outlets and online at ticketmaster.com and mgmgrand.com. There is a two-ticketper-person limit on the $350 seats.
Mayweather told the New York crowd he would love to fight in Madison Square Garden before he calls it quits. Of course, he has been very loyal to the MGM and was merely being polite to the fans, hoping they’ll purchase the payper-view telecast.
But unless New York repeals its state income tax laws, Monday was as close as Mayweather’s Big Apple fans were going to get to him.
“The Earth is my turf,” Mayweather said. “You can put me in any ring anywhere and I’m going to come out victorious.”