By Sean Jones: Canelo Alvarez is excited about becoming a promotional free agent after leaving DAZN and Golden Boy Promotions last Friday. The former four-division world champion Alvarez (53-1-2, 36 KOs), can now co-promote his fights and his manager, Eddy Reynoso.
Canelo, 30, is expected to fight IBF super middleweight champion Caleb ‘Sweethands’ Plant (20-0, 12 KOs) next on December 19th. If that fight happens, it would be the biggest for Canelo his controversial 12 round majority decision win over Gennadiy Golovkin in 2018.
It could be a good thing that Canelo will be in charge of picking his opponents, but not if it means that he’s going to continue selecting guys that are the fourth or fifth best in their respective weight classes.
For Canelo to give the boxing fans what they want to see, he’ll need to make a major upgrade of the level of opposition he’s been fighting lately.
That means instead of Canelo fighting Rocky Fielding and a past his prime Sergey Kovalev; he needs to take on these guys:
- Jermall Charlo
- Artur Beterbiev
- Dimitry Bivol
- David Benavidez
Those are the murderer’s row that boxing fans want to see Canelo fight, and they’re all capable of beating him. Canelo would be running the gauntlet if he were to fight those four elite-level fighters, and there’s a perfect chance he would come out of it with an 0-4 record with his career in horrible shape.
Canelo wants to give the fans what they deserve
“It is one of the most important days of my career. The idea that Eddy and I have is to be promoters and have co-promotions with any promoter, make good fights, and give the public what they deserve,” said Canelo to BoxAzteca7.
You can argue that if Canelo had given the fans what they deserve, he’d still be with DAZN, and everything would be doing swimmingly with them. It’s no secret that DAZN wanted Canelo to fight Golovkin a third time. Canelo didn’t give the fans what they wanted by fighting GGG in a trilogy match.
Instead of that GGG third fight, the fans saw Canelo taking on Rocky Fielding, Daniel Jacobs, and Sergey Kovalev. Those are contests the boxing fans were not asking Canelo to take, but he took them anyway. So why, after Canelo leaves DAZN, would things be any different in terms of his opponent selection?
Fielding was viewed as the weakest of the 168-lb champions by some boxing fans when Canelo fought him in 2018. The same goes for Kovalev being viewed as the weakest link among the 175-lb champions when Canelo fought him.
As for Jacobs, he’d already lost to Gennadiy Golovkin and Dmitry Pirog and was coming off of a controversial win over Sergiy Derevyanchenko.
Will Canelo give the fans what they “deserve”?
Canelo may choose to really give the fans want to see with him taking on the best fighters at 160, 168, and 175. But if Canelo does that, his career as a major player could end very, very fast with him taking loss after loss.
Predictably, Canelo will face WBO super middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders if he gets past Caleb Plant on December 19th. There’s no demand for Canelo to fight Saunders, but that’s likely who he’ll face. Saunders is the weak link at 168 and a guy that Canelo was supposed to fight earlier this year.
If Canelo fights Saunders on pay-per-view, it’ll do poorly in the U.S because the fans aren’t excited about that fight. Saunders has never fought anyone good during his career. Saunders looked horribly bad last year in rallying to stop fringe contender Marcelo Coceres ni the 11th round in November 2019 in Los Angeles.
Surprisingly, Saunders was getting beaten by Coceres, and he was on his way to losing the fight when he got a miracle knockout.
Again, if Canelo wants to give the fans what they deserve, he needs to face Jermall Charlo, David Benavidez, Dmitry Bivol, and Artur Beterbiev. You can forget about Golovkin, who is turning 39 next May. With Golovkin under contract with DAZN through his 40th birthday, it won’t be worth it for Canelo to fight him at that point.
Golovkin will be too old, and if he hasn’t been beaten again by that time, it just means he’ll have been facing soft opponents.
For example, Golovkin’s next fight in December is expected to be Kamil Szeremeta. That’ll be an easy fight for Golovkin, but it’ll also do nothing for DAZN because there’s no demand for that mismatch.