Photo: Naoki Fukuda

Joel Fisher, a long-time senior executive at Madison Square Garden, claims that Floyd Mayweather Jr. hurt his legacy and blundered by not fighting at least once at the famed Garden. And he said that Canelo Alvarez risks doing the same if he never fights in New York.

“We have a relationship with Mayweather and we spoke to them many times (about fighting at MSG),” Fisher told RingTV.com on Thursday. “We personally think he made a mistake in not at least one time in his career fighting at Madison Square Garden. It would have been an incredible event. And I think he lost a big opportunity by not deciding to fight at least once, if not more times, at the Garden.”

While rumors circulated that Mayweather was interested in fighting in New York at some point before he retired in September, Mayweather never did. He established a cozy relationship with the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas and fought his last 12 bouts there.

Fisher, who was recently promoted to executive vice president of marquee events and operations, where his duties include boxing, insisted that in order for Alvarez to truly become a crossover star, he needs to share a ring at MSG. The Garden will host a junior welterweight title bout on Saturday between rising star Terence Crawford and Philly’s Hank Lundy in the Theater on HBO.

“We’ve told Golden Boy that we think Canelo, to really get to the next level, he can’t just fight on the West Coast,” Fisher said. “He’s got to come and expose himself to the fans on the east coast. We think the Garden is the only place he (should) be.”

To that end, Fisher said the Garden will be in the running to land the super fight between the WBC and RING middleweight champion Alvarez and IBF and WBA champ Gennady Golovkin later this year- if it ever happens.

“We think the Canelo-Golovkin fight would be huge here,” Fisher said. “Obviously we have a tremendous relationship with Golovkin. We have a fight with him on April 23 in the Forum (in Inglewood, California), which we own. That’s going to sell out. It’s already sold over 8,500 seats in the first week. Because of the relationship, we’ll be in the running for the Golovkin-Canelo fight.”

At the same time, Fisher acknowledged that if Jerry Jones makes a compelling offer to host the fight at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, it will be hard to match.

“Now, with all that being said, if they go to Texas and they believe they can sell 70,000 seats at AT&T Stadium, we don’t have that many seats here and we’re not going to get into a competition with them because they can offer a lot more,” Fisher said. “But that all being said, we think if a fighter like Canelo is going to be considered one of the best fighters in the world, one of the best fighters potentially ever, the only way he can say that is if he ultimately fights at some point at Madison Square Garden.”

Fisher said the Garden is also a candidate to host the rematch between RING, WBO and WBA heavyweight champion Tyson Fury and Wladimir Klitschko this summer. No site or date has been announced, but the fight seems headed to the United Kingdom or Germany based on recent reports.

“Klitschko-Fury, we’ve been in deep discussions with them,” he said. “They have to make a decision but we’re in the running for all of these big fights. We have relationships with all the promoters. Sometimes they’ll call us. Sometimes we call them but when it’s a big fight that makes sense for New York, like Klitschko-Fury, we’re in touch with them and they’re calling us and we’re calling them. Whether or not we’re able to make a deal or if they decide to go to Europe is really at the end of the day their decision. But we would love to have that opportunity to have that fight here.”

Fisher is interested in creating a similar dynamic with the young Puerto Rican phenom Felix Verdejo as he had with Miguel Cotto, who fought often at the Garden on the eve of the Puerto Rican Day Parade with great fanfare. Verdejo will face William Silva Saturday night in the co-feature of Crawford-Lundy.

“Felix Verdejo, we believe is the next big Puerto Rican star,” Fisher said. “He’s fought here in the past on the Puerto Rican Day Parade weekend with Cotto. We are hopeful that he’ll do something here this coming June for Puerto Rican Day Parade weekend, so we would love to establish that. That’s a series that (Top Rank president) Todd duBoef really came up with years ago. It’s been incredible successful and Todd and myself really want to do something like that.”

Fisher doesn’t have a number of cards in mind for the Garden to host annually, preferring to go on a fight-by-fight basis. “We don’t just do any boxing for the sake of saying we can do boxing,” Fisher said. “We want to make sure it’s fights that make a lot of sense, whether it’s the Theater or the arena. And then they’re going to be big fights that sell extremely well.”