Boxing Odds and Ends: Notes on Canelo – GGG III and Oregon’s ‘White Delight’

According to various sources, Canelo Alvarez’s planned fight in September against IBF super middleweight champion Caleb Plant is in jeopardy, thus opening the door to a third encounter between Canelo and Gennadiy “GGG” Golovkin.

Caleb Plant is tied to Al Haymon’s company, Premier Boxing Champions. Haymon is purportedly pressuring Canelo to sign a three-fight deal. Canelo, who has been working with DAZN on a fight-to-fight basis since severing his long-term contract with them, is unwilling to make that concession.

A bout with Plant would be another legacy-defining fight for the Mexican superstar. Were he to win – and he would be a heavy favorite — he would become only the seventh man to claim all four meaningful belts in the four-belt era, joining middleweights Bernard Hopkins and Jermain Taylor, cruiserweight Oleksandr Usyk, junior welterweights Terence Crawford and Josh Taylor, and lightweight Teofimo Lopez. Haymon apparently thinks that this inducement gives PBC the upper hand.

Alvarez, currently 56-1-2 (38 KOs) and Golovkin (41-1-1, 36 KOs) had two epic encounters on back-to-back Mexican Independence Day Weekends in 2017 and 2018. The first fight, marred by Adalaide Byrd’s head-scratching scorecard, was scored a draw. Most folks thought that GGG had edged it. In their second bout, Canelo won a majority decision that probably should have been unanimous. It remains Golovkin’s lone defeat.

Since their last meeting, Canelo has gone to post six times, winning titles at 175 and 168. He relinquished the 175-pound diadem which he acquired via an 11^th-round stoppage of WBO belt-holder Sergey Kovalev.

Golovkin has fought only three times since Canelo-GGG II. A bruising encounter with Sirgiy Derevyanchenko was sandwiched between easy assignments vs. Steve Rolls and Kamil Szeremeta. He reportedly has an agreement in place to meet Ryota Murata in Tokyo on New Year’s Eve.

Age may be catching up with Golovkin who is now 39 years old. Canelo turns 31 this coming Sunday and is considered to be at the top of his game.

Lance Pugmire of The Athletic reached out to GGG to feel him out about renewing acquaintances with Canelo. “Ready, willing, and available,” replied the Kazakh KO artist.

If the match could be arranged for Mexican Independence Day Weekend — and with each passing day that seems less likely — a fair guess is that it would land at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, where Canelo last appeared, drawing an announced crowd of 73,126, a U.S. indoor record, for his match with Billy Joe Saunders. The Cowboys open the season with two games on the road. Mexican Independence Day (Sept. 16) falls on a Thursday this year and the Cowboys don’t play a home game in September until the 27^th.

Mike “White Delight” Wilson

The last professional boxing card in New York City was held on Dec. 14, 2019. It was a Top Rank show featuring such names as Terence Crawford, Teofimo Lopez, Michael Conlan, and Edgar Berlanga. The venue was Madison Square Garden.

Boxing returns to the Garden (albeit in a more intimate room) on Tuesday, Aug. 3, and while the show has nowhere near the allure of the last show held in New York, just having boxing back after such a long absence is cause for celebration.

The main event on the Aug. 3 card pits Michael Hunter against Mike Wilson.

Hunter (19-1-1, 13 KOs) spurned an IBF eliminator with Filip Hrgovic to take this match which promised a larger purse — an indication that upstart Triller has deep pockets (or the illusion of deep pockets; time will tell).

Hunter carried 224 ½ pounds for his last fight, a stay-busy fight in Galveston, Texas. Mike Wilson (21-1, 10 KOs) carried 198 ½-pounds for his most recent fight, a stay-busy fight in Central Point, Oregon.

For the uninitiated, Central Point abuts Medford, Mike Wilson’s hometown. It is home to the Jackson County Fairgrounds where Wilson has fought eight of his last nine fights. He and his wife Jenifer promoted those fights. They called their shows the “Rogue Valley Rumble.” As the matchmaker, Wilson was careful not to match himself too tough. The list of his former opponents includes Melvin “The Romantic Redneck” Russell who hopefully romances better than he fights.

The Mike Wilson saga smacks of Mike Lee, the Notre Dame alum who promoted a slew of fights for himself in and around Chicago, building up his record to where he became a useful opponent and ultimately fodder for Caleb Plant. Lee brought a 21-0 record into Plant’s first title defense but proved to be way out of his element.

It’s hard to envision Wilson, the bald, 38-year-old Oregonian who sports a nickname that invites derision, winning on Aug. 3, but Mike “White Delight” Wilson (pictured) is much better than Mike Lee and it wouldn’t shock us if he makes a competitive showing.

Wilson was a very good amateur. He advanced to the finals of the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 201-pound division in 2004, was a U.S. national amateur champion in ’05 and ’06, and might have repeated again in ’07 if he hadn’t run across Mike Hunter in the finals. (There’s the hook for the tub-thumpers: Hunter vs. Wilson II, 14 years in the making.)

There’s one recognizable name on Mike Wilson’s ledger. In November of 2018, he opposed Denis Lebedev in Monte Carlo. Lebedev was long in the tooth – eight years had elapsed since he flattened Roy Jones Jr – and he was nearing the end of the line, but the rugged Russian was still a handful for anyone in the division. Wilson exceeded expectations, lasting the 12-round distance with the former WBA/IBF cruiserweight champion.

If Mike Wilson has a future in the sport, it’s as a “bridgerweight,” but even that is a longshot; he has too many years in his rear-view mirror. But who knows what he could have achieved if he hadn’t been wed to the soil of Oregon?

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