Canelo Alvarez is boxing’s most influential fighter. An icon and a world champion, he finds himself at the centre of a colossal fight in Las Vegas on Saturday.
Canelo will defend the undisputed super-middleweight world titles at Allegiant Stadium on the edges of the city’s neon strip against unbeaten American Terence Crawford.
It is a fight that has divided boxing fans and the boxing business. The contest is being promoted by Dana White, the man behind the rise and rise of the UFC, and it is his first boxing promotion. Obviously, it is being bankrolled by Turki Alalshikh, the man behind the Saudi Arabian boxing revolution, and it is not his first promotion.
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Canelo against Crawford is also being screened on Netflix, which is part of the broadcaster’s apparent move to cover increasing amounts of live sport. If it all seems a bit new and edgy, just remember that Canelo and Crawford have been shaped by a life in boxing’s most torrid and old-fashioned gyms.
They are certainly not Love Island rejects or two men in a freak fight. Please, don’t let the hype and glam distract you from a genuinely fantastic fight.
Canelo has been a professional boxer since he was 15, was fighting 10 and 12-rounders as a teenager, and won his first world title in 2011. The Crawford bout will be his 29th world-title fight. He has held world-title belts at four weights and lost just two of his 67 fights. He is still only 35. He would be unique in any era of the professional boxing business. And holding a world title first at super-welterweight and then briefly at light-heavyweight means he has fought inside a huge space of 21lb.
The Mexican has also run out of challengers at his weight and the weight below him, and that is where Crawford enters the party.
Both men have been in the top three or four boxers in the world for a long, long time. They have operated at an elite level but been separated by as many as 28lb; talk of a Canelo and Crawford fight has been heard in boxing’s corridors for a long time. Last year, Alalshikh announced that the rumours were over, and he set in motion the deal for the fight.
In boxing, it is a fun game to guess the purses involved; it is clear that both are making more than they have ever made in a fight, but the real figures are never revealed. A purse of $200m is accepted as the final fee, and the split is thought to favour Canelo considerably, with perhaps 75 per cent going his way. That sounds about right.
Crawford, who is 37, won his first world title in Glasgow back in 2014. He was 134lb on the night; his next title was at 140lb, and then he moved to full welterweight and the 147lb limit. In August of last summer, during the Riyadh Season event in Los Angeles, he moved to super-welterweight, weighed 153lb on the night, and was not overly convincing in his 12-round win over Israil Madrimov (as a guide, Canelo had been that weight in 2011). Still, the Madrimov fight led to the hurried chat of a showdown with Canelo.
Crawford is unbeaten in 41 fights with 19 wins in world-title fights. He has not fought in over a year and has, instead, slowly transformed his body from being a big welterweight to pushing the limits on the scales at super-middleweight. He is unrecognisable now, no longer the lean lightweight.
The danger is that he will have lost some speed, and that will be crucial against Canelo, who has been a full super-middleweight since 2018. The truth is that no amount of instant and impressive muscle gain can match the natural strength of an opponent who has been at the weight for so many years.
Still, Crawford will not be thrown all over the ring by Canelo, that is for sure. It’s boxing, and not wrestling.
It is a fine fight, still a fight with a lot of unknowns, which seems strange considering they have fought a combined total of 108 fights. Canelo has so often breezed through a fight when it was thought he would struggle, and conversely made hard work of easy nights. Crawford did have to work hard against Madrimov last summer and that, on reflection, looks like a bad form guide for the showdown against Canelo.
However, this fight has something special about it, and it will certainly not be easy for either man to pull off the win – a draw, by the way, is a decent option.
There is a chance that caution, skill and smart boxing rule, and that will make for a technical fight. There is also a chance that Canelo wants to force the pace, and then we would have a wonderful fight on our hands. Crawford, you see, has never been under sustained pressure.
The sensible prediction is Canelo on points; the smart prediction is a close, close Crawford win.
