By Trevor McIntyre: Saul Canelo Alvarez will be raking in the dough tonight with him getting a guaranteed purse of $35 million for his unification fight against Daniel Jacobs on DAZN at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs) will be getting a considerably smaller purse of $2.5 million for the fight, according to Dan Rafael. However, Jacobs will be getting an additional $10 million for the fight due to his deal with DAZN.
Canelo’s big $35M purse is a result of his recent $365 million, 11-fight contract he signed with DAZN. It would be interesting to see how much Canelo would make for a fight with Jacobs if this contest was televised on pay-per-view on ESPN, FOX or Showtime. Would he make $35 million from the PPV or would it come in far less? Tonight’s fight should bring in a massive amount of new subscribers to DAZN from boxing fans looking to see Canelo battle one of the best middleweights in the world in IBF champion Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs). If the fight brings in the amount of boxing fans that some think it will, DAZN could attract a massive amount of new subscribers to their platform tonight.
What we don’t know is how the illegal streaming of the Canelo-Jacobs fight will impact the the numbers tonight for DAZN. You’ve got to imagine that there will be a lot of illegal streaming of the Canelo vs. Jacobs fight card that will be going on tonight. However, for most fans, they aren’t going to put in the effort to scour the internet to look for ways to be able to watch the Canelo-Jacobs fight for free. Subscribing to DAZN allows fans to see a lot of different fights each month at a low cost. It’s not just the Canelo vs. Jacobs fight. There are a massive amount of fights that are constantly taking place on DAZN each month. It’s a great deal for fans.
Other purses for tonight’s Canelo vs. Jacobs card on DAZN are as follows:
– Vergil Ortiz Jr. $75,000 vs. Maurice Herrera $75K
– Joseph Diaz Jr. $100,000 vs. Freddy Fonseca $10K
– Lamont Roach $75,000 vs. Jonathan Oquendo $50K
– Sadam Ali $150,000 vs. Anthony Young $45K
– John Ryder $100,000 vs. Bilal Akkawy $30K
With the huge money Canelo is getting tonight, Jacobs is going to need to bring his A-game to get the victory.
”To me, it’s a 50-50 fight,” said Jacobs’ promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing in talking to IFL TV about tonight’s fight. ”Call it vibes. I just feel this is his [Jacobs] time. When you’re as good as Daniel and you have the attributes that Daniel has, I just believe Daniel is going to do it. I think styles make fights. If Daniel can put the game plan together, we can win. I won’t be surprised if this fight is close and Daniel get the decision. There’s a lot of pressure on the judging panel. They all know that he’s [Canelo Alvarez] has got a lot of favorable decisions. So at what point does that work against you?” Hearn said.
The odds-makers don’t see the Canelo vs. Jacobs fight as a 50-50 affair. They have Canelo a HUGE 4.5 to 1 favorite to defeat Jacobs. The line is Canelo at -450 for Jacobs at +350. Hearn obviously is biased for his fighter Jacobs. It would be interesting to know how Hearn would see the fight if he wasn’t the promoter for the 32-year-old Jacobs. What’s keeping fans from picking Jacobs to win the fight is the way his chin has betrayed him in the past when he’s fought against good opposition like GGG and Dmitry Pirog. Jacobs was knocked out by Pirog in the fifth round in 2010. The way that Jacobs jumped up after the referee stopped the fight, it looked like he mentally quit. One second Jacobs was seemingly unconscious on the canvas with both eyes closed, and the next second he was leaping to his feet and complaining to the referee without looking groggy or unclear on what had just happened.
Hearn could be right about the judges likely to give the victory to IBF middleweight champion Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs). The judges obviously aren’t going to want to be criticized by fans like what happened after Canelo’s first fight with former middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin in September 2017. That fight was scored a 12 round draw, but most people thought GGG won it handily. That fight gave boxing a black eye, as there were so many fans that felt that Golovkin should have been given the victory. The judges that worked the fight saw it so differently than the rest of the world, and they made themselves look bad with how they scored it. Tonight’s contest between Canelo and Jacobs will have the same judging crew that worked the Canelo-GGG 2 rematch last September. Canelo won that fight by a 12 round majority decision. However, the outcome wasn’t as controversial as the first Canelo vs. Golovkin fight in 2017. Jacobs’ promoter Eddie Hearn agreed with the decision, so he felt there was no reason to have the three judges thrown out for tonight’s fight.
”We want a complete blank canvas. Forget it’s Canelo. Forget it’s Daniel Jacobs. Just score the fight,” Hearn said in continuing to talk about the judges for tonight’s fight. ”I think Danny can box on the outside. He can stand and fight on the inside. He can throw blistering combinations. It’s not just one, two, three shots. It’s eight or nine shots. I think he’s got in his mind to try and stop Canelo,” Hearn said.
It’s pretty obvious that if Jacobs gets Canelo in trouble tonight, he’s going to unload on him with a flurry of shots to try and stop him. Whether Jacobs will land with shots shots is another question. When Jacobs hurt Maciej Sulecki in the 12th round last year in April, he wasn’t connecting cleanly after the Polish fighter got back to his feet. There’s no point in Jacobs throwing a flurry of shots if he can’t connect with anything cleanly on the chin of Canelo.
”I think the fight will be called up on by Canelo if Danny Jacobs were to win. There is a rematch clause,” Hearn said about Canelo likely executing the rematch clause if Jacobs wins tonight. ”If Danny wins, I can’t see Canelo not wanting the rematch.”