By Edward Chaykovsky

According to report in the Los Angeles Times, last Saturday’s Canelo Alvarez vs. Liam Smith title fight from AT&;T Stadium in Texas is not expected to break 300,000 pay-per-view buys.

Canelo (48-1-1, 34 KOs) was making his return to the junior middleweight division and captured the WBO title from previously undefeated Liam Smith, who was dropped for the third time and stopped in the ninth round.

When the fight was first announced, it surprised a lot of people in the industry because Smith was unknown to the majority of all fans in the United States and Mexico. And Smith even lacked superstar status in the UK. The hefty HBO PPV Price of $64.95 was another obstacle that prevented fans from opening their wallets.

Canelo's fight with Miguel Cotto from last November gained 900,000 buys, and then his May bout with Amir Khan generated around 500,000.

Industry executives, who requesting anonymity while speaking with the paper, believe Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya, and Canelo, made a big mistake by making it appear as if Canelo was going to face Gennady Golovkin in the fall - only to name Smith in his place.

“I’d put tape over [Alvarez’s] mouth and [De La Hoya’s] mouth,” one fight executive told the paper. “The idiocy of [Alvarez] calling out Golovkin and fighting someone nobody’s heard of … they put themselves in this position. So, right now, he’s in the unenviable position of his next fight is not going to be against Golovkin either, so he’s going to pay the price for it again.”

While there are ongoing talks for a fight between Canelo (48-1-1, 34KOs) and Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs), Golden Boy wants that contest to take place in September 2017 at the earliest.

Golovkin is likely to fight again on December 10th, possibly at Madison Square Garden against mandatory challenger Daniel Jacobs.

Golovkin's pay-per-view debut against David Lemieux from last October only generated 150,000 buys. His fight earlier this month with Kell Brook from London's O2 Arena, sold 500,000 pay-per-view buys on Sky Box Office in the UK, according to The Times.