Canelo Alvarez vs. John Ryder on May 6 on Pay-per-view in Mexico

By Boxing News - 03/14/2023 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Canelo Alvarez will be in action on May 6th, defending his undisputed super middleweight championship against British fighter John ‘The Gorilla’ Ryder on DAZN PPV on Cinco de Mayo at the Akron Stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico.

In a controversial move, Canelo vs. Ryder will be shown on pay-per-view on DAZN for U.S. and Canadian viewers instead of regular non-PPV, which is coming at an awful time for the streaming giant right after their massive price hikes to their subscribers.

It will be interesting to see if Canelo-Ryder will generate a lot of PPV buys on DAZN or if fans will choose to ignore it and wait to watch it that night for free on Youtube or turn to illegal streams to watch it.

Canelo vs. Ryder, how to watch?

Boxing fans can watch Canelo vs. Ryder on May 6th live on DAZN and DAZN PPV in the U.S. & Canada. The PPV price will be revealed soon, as well as the times.

On paper, it’s not a fight that one would typically see on pay-per-view, so you got to wonder why Canelo and DAZN are choosing to stick this albatross on PPV to entice subscribers to stay with them or join.

This is the gimme that Canelo needs to get him a sure-thing win, as he’s looked poor since his victory over Caleb Plant, and some fans believe he’s a shot fighter after the punishment he took against ‘Sweethands.’

Ryder (32-5, 18 KOs) isn’t the type of opponent that one would think would warrant asking boxing fans to pay to watch the superstar Canelo fight on PPV, as he’s not well known, has five losses on his record, and more importantly, fans in North American haven’t been demanding this fight.

Canelo will return to his home country Mexico after fighting in the U.S. for the last 11 years. The 32-year-old Alvarez (58-2-2, 39 KOs) needs a tune-up after suffering a one-sided loss to Dmitry Bivol and then struggling to defeat his old nemesis, 40-year-old Gennadiy Golovkin, last September.

Canelo suffered a left wrist injury that required surgery. Ryder will be Canelo’s first fight back from surgery, so, logically, he would take a gimme like this in his first fight back.

Again, putting the Canelo-Ryder fight on DAZN PPV is the exciting part that boxing fans will take issue with because this is a mismatch on paper, and it involves an obscure fighter from Britain, who isn’t popular in his own country, and, of course, he’s an unknown in the U.S except with the hardcore boxing fans.

Ryder is a blue-collar fighter who isn’t blessed with talent but makes up for it by being a hard worker who fights quickly and has a good chin.

Canelo-Ryder, where will fight take place?

Canelo-Ryder will occur on May 6th at the Akron Stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Just the fast pace alone that Ryder uses could give Canelo problems, but with the fight taking place in Guadalajara, Mexico, it’s going to make it difficult for the British fighter to win a decision unless he puts Alvarez through the grinder.

Canelo fell apart three rounds against Bivol and six rounds against the shell of Golovkin. So at this point, Canelo is a six-round fighter who fights on fumes in the second half of his fights. If Ryder wants to win the fans, if not the judges, he’ll jump on Canelo from the get-go, force him to empty his gas tank early and wear him out in the second half of the fights.

Ryder must focus on loading up on his shots as much as he can because he lacks power, and Canelo will walk through his weak punches to batter him at will if he has nothing to worry about.

Canelo would have swerved the Ryder fight, and the WBO would have likely let him, but he wanted it for obvious reasons. Supposedly, Canelo will fight a rematch against WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol next in September, albeit at 168 instead of 175.

First, Canelo must beat Ryder and get out of that fight in one piece without suffering a setback with his surgically repaired left wrist. Ryder will be in Canelo’s face the entire night, forcing him to use his left hand a lot.

Why is Canelo Alvarez fighting John Ryder?

The reasons Canelo is fighting the 34-year-old John Ryder instead of higher-quality opposition are as follows:

A. It gives Canelo a tune-up level opponent for a sure-thing win

B. Canelo gets a badly needed confidence booster

C. Easy Payday

D. Giving Canelo’s Mexican fans the opportunity to see him live

Ryder put himself in this enviable spot to make life-changing money against Canelo by beating Zach Parker and the faded old veteran Daniel Jacobs last year. Parker was a guy with mostly wins over domestic-level opposition.

Ideally, Ryder should have had to fight one of the talented super middleweights to earn a shot against Canelo by fighting one of these fighters: David Benavidez, David Morrell, Caleb Plant, or Demetrius Andrade. It’s unlikely that Ryder would have beaten any of them, and the chances are high that he’d be knocked out by most, if not all, of them.

Canel has seemingly been dragging his feet about fighting a rematch with Dmitry Bivol after being taken to school by the WBA 175-lb champion last year in May. It’s believed that Canelo took the fight with Bivol only because he’d recently had two back-to-back lackluster fights against Umar Salamov and Craig Richards.

So he was considered a potentially safe target for Canelo, but he turned out to be a nightmare for the Mexican star, outboxing him and making him look bad. Immediately after the fight, Canelo said he would fight Bivol to avenge his loss. But surprisingly, Canelo went in the opposite direction, fighting the faded Gennadiy Golovkin, who was a shell of his former self at 40.

With that fight resembling a tune-up for Canelo, it was surprising that he wanted another warm-up fight, this time against Ryder, instead of fighting Bivol in the rematch that the boxing fan was interested in seeing.

If Canelo was going to delay taking the Bivol fight, boxing fans wanted to see him fight ‘The Big Four’ – David Benavidez, David Morrell, Caleb Plant, or Demetrius Andrade. Picking Ryder instead of one of those guys gives the impression that Canelo is just milking his contract with DAZN, trying to make easy money for as long as possible before his career is finished.

In terms of ability, Ryder doesn’t have much to worry Canelo. He’s slow, small, weak, and there to be hit. As I mentioned, the only way Canelo will have problems in this fight is if Ryder pushes a fast pace that causes him to fade early and winds up taking a beating along the ropes as he did in his one-sided loss to Bivol.

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