Prelim fights…you never who’s going to make it big

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW… When you watch preliminary fights on big shows, you never know who you are watching. You never know which guy on the undercard will one day turn out to be a superstar and elite champion in the world of boxing. October 2008 in Cabazon, California I was in the dressing room, had a fighter out there, and there was a young guy from Mexico on the card that night there who was getting ready to fight a former high level American amateur who I knew by the name of Larry Mosley, The guy in the dress room to me was nothing more than the kid who was about to fight Larry Mosley tonight. Larry from what I knew was the favorite in the bout. The kid ended up beating Larry on a 10 round decision that night. I didn't think much of him one way or the other, though. Just another guy on an undercard somewhere. Two years later, I was in the green room at the ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut getting ready to go on the air on ESPN to do the pre-fight preview and the post fight analysis of the Floyd Mayweather-Shane Mosley title fight. I was watching some of the preliminary fights and I noticed the kid from that night in California a couple years earlier was on TV getting ready to fight Miguel Cotto's brother Miguel and I remember distinctly thinking that he was an Irish kid. Very Irish looking as a matter of fact. Turns out all these years later, that young guy was Mexican and a future multiple-time world champion named Canelo Alvarez.​