By Miguel Rivera
Jose 'Chepo' Reynoso, manager of Mexican superstar Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez (47-1-1, 33KOs), is expecting a very tough fight when his boxer returns to the junior middleweight division to challenge undefeated Liam Smith (23-0-1, 13KOs) for the WBO world championship.
The title fight will take place on September 17th, likely from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It would be Canelo's third consecutive fight in Las Vegas and his third in a row on HBO Pay-Per-View.
Canelo's last five fights took place at 155-pounds, which is one above junior middleweight.
Smith capture the vacant WBO title in October with a knockout of John Thompson in seven rounds. The belt became vacant after the sanctioning body stripped Demetrius Andrade for inactivity.
Smith has made two defense since, winning big easily by knockout. One of the four fighting Smith brothers, Liam is starting to find his power and skills with every fight and is currently riding an eight fight knockout streak. Now he travels over to the United States for the toughest challenge of his young career with an army of Mexican fans expected at the venue to support Canelo during Mexican Independence Day weekend.
While Reynoso wants his fighter to get a knockout, they are not going to chase it.
"The knockout is always something tasty, people always enjoy a knockout, but the reality is that we respect Smith a lot. He's undefeated, a world champion, so we're going into this [fight] with respect and seriousness," Reynoso told ESPN Deportes/
"For me the fight will be beautiful, because the boy has a good record and good knockout streak. He seems to have good punching power, so it will be an attractive fight. But we've seen that Saul is increasingly becoming more mature, he is a very complete fighter and this is an excellent challenge."
