By Sean Jones: Canelo Alvarez states that he’s got a big news announcement today at 3:00 pm PT. Presumably, Canelo (53-1-2, 36 KOs) will be announcing that his December fight against Callum Smith has been finalized for DAZN. “The pound-for-pound king is back,” said Alvarez on his Instagram page.
Canelo-Smith has been in negotiations for weeks. Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn said earlier on Tuesday that the deal was close to being finalized. Hearn said that if the fight didn’t get done this week, it won’t be happening.
But with Canelo now about to make the announcement personally, it seems that it’s academic that the fight WBA super-middleweight champion Callum Smith (27-0, 19 KOs) is a done deal for December 18th or 19th on DAZN.
After two years of Canelo, 30, holding the secondary WBA 168lb title, he’ll finally be fighting for the main title against ‘Super World’ champion Callum Smith.
Callum Smith not a great option for Canelo
The World Boxing Association surprisingly didn’t strip Canelo of his WBA super-middleweight title despite him not defending their belt for two years since he captured it in December 2018.
What’s interesting is that now that Canelo is a free agent after leaving DAZN and Golden Boy, he’ll be back fighting on DAZN. It seems a little odd, but he felt he had to leave them. The $365 million, 11-fight deal that he had wasn’t working for a variety of reasons.
Callum Smith, 6’3″, has the size and the punching power to defeat the 5’8″ Canelo, but he lacks the inside game.
As we saw in Callum’s last fight against the smallish 5’8″ John Ryder last November, he can’t fight a lick in close. Smith is completely vulnerable when his opponents in close, and he’s pretty much helpless.
Smith is dangerous with his left hook, and if he catches Canelo coming in, he put out the lights. However, Canelo has got a great chin, as we saw in his wins over Daniel Jacobs, Gennadiy Golovkin, and Sergey Kovalev.
He took their best shots and beat them all. Although you can argue that Golovkin was robbed twice in his fights with Canelo, technically he got the wins.
Canelo taking a safe fight
Unfortunately, Canelo’s choice of Callum has been met with lukewarm praise from the U.S fans, who are largely indifferent to this fight. Smith is more of a paper champion, and not viewed as the #1 guy at 168.
It’ll be interesting to see if Canelo vs. Smith will bring in any new subscribers to DAZN. Smith shows no emotion when he talks, and his accent makes him hard to understand.
The American fans want to see Canelo fight these guys:
- David Benavidez
- Caleb Plant
- Gennadiy Golovkin
- Jermall Charlo
- Artur Beterbiev
- Dimitry Bivol
- Joe Smith Jr
- Jermell Charlo
- Jean Pascal
The UK fans are excited about seeing Canelo fight one of their own in Callum Smith and Billy Joe Saunders, but the Americans are just not interested in this mismatch.
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