Photo by: Tom Hogan

Oscar De La Hoya portrayed the decision to wait until the fall of 2017 for Canelo Alvarez to face middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin as having to do with weight and making sure Alvarez is accustomed to fighting at 160 pounds.

“Canelo knows his body,” De La Hoya said on a conference call on Wednesday to hype Alvarez’s Sept. 17 HBO PPV title fight with Liam Smith at AT&T Stadium. “The bottom line is, Canelo is a 154-pound fighter. The fact that he fought at 155, people expect him to go and fight at middleweight. He’s going up to 160 pounds when his body feels ready. People always want to see the very best. He is the star fighter in boxing and people want him to fight the very best and fighting a Golovkin — he’s going to fight him but when he’s ready to go up to 160.”

Alvarez vacated (47-1-1, 33 knockouts) the WBC middleweight title in May rather than face Golovkin, who was his mandatory. Alvarez had never fought above 155 pounds in his career. His next fight is against the junior middleweight titleholder Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs) and it’s assumed that Alvarez will move up to 160 pounds thereafter for a potential fight in December and in preparation to face Golovkin.

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