By Dan Ambrose: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman is reportedly saying that Canelo Alvarez has informed him that he’ll be returning to the ring in early 2021 to defend his newly won WBC super middleweight title against mandatory Avni ‘Mr. Robot’ Yildirim.
This would be a homecoming fight for the former four-division world champion Canelo with him said to be facing Yildirim in Mexico. Compared to some of the talented fighters at 168 like David Benavidez, Caleb Plant, and Bektemir Melikuziev, Yildirim is a risk-free fight for Canelo.
Canelo with the perfect showcase fight
It’s a perfect showcase [read: mismatch] type of fight for Canelo to look great in front of his boxing fans in Mexico. It’s unclear if fans will be allowed back by February for Canelo to face Yildirim in a large stadium in Mexico City.
If so, then that’s likely would we could be seeing. It won’t matter that Yildirim isn’t highly rated or well known by the Mexican boxing fans. They just want to see Canelo fight live.
Canelo’s trainer Eddy Reynoso said after his win ver WBA 168-lb champion Callum Smith last Saturday night that the Mexican star will be fighting in February against the WBC mandatory Yildirim (21-2, 12 KOs), and that he would then return in May.
The WBC conveniently placed their vacant 168-lb title on the line for Canelo vs. Smith, but with the condition that the winner would need to face Yildirim next.
Canelo schooled the previously unbeaten WBA Super World super middleweight champion Callum (27-1, 19 KOs), beating him by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
Callum proved to be a poor champion, as he looked slow and he spent the entire fight with his back against the ropes.
Alvarez expected to face Saunders in May 2021
Canelo’s fight in May 2021 is expected to be a unification match against WB super middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders, and not a fight against IBF champ Caleb Plant or a trilogy matchy with Gennadiy Golovkin.
If Canelo does fight the 29-year-old Yildirim next, it would be a major disappointment for boxing fans. Yildirim is coming off of a loss to past his prime Anthony Dirrell last year in February.
The World Boxing Council kept Yildirim as the mandatory despite his loss to Dirrell because the fight was stopped due to an injury that the Flint, Michigan native suffered.
Dirrell suffered a bad cut above his left eye in the 7th round, and the fight eventually had to be halted after the 10th. At the time, Yildirim was coming on after having been dominated by Dirrell before he’d suffered the cut.
If not for the cut, there’s a real possibility that Dirrell would have continued his domination of the badly over-matched Yildirim, and he likely would have knocked him out.
Yildirim was destroyed by Eubank Jr
Chris Eubank Jr stopped Yildirim in the third round in 2017 in the World Boxing Super Series tournament. Eubank Jr and Dirrell are the only two world-class fighters that Yildirim has faced during his six-year pro career.
It was complete slaughter on Eubank’s part, with him repeatedly catching the painfully slow Yildirim with uppercuts throughout the fight before finally stopping him in the third.
Yildirim was a sucker for Eubank’s uppercuts, and he never made any adjustments to stop that punch.
Once Eubank Jr realized that Yildirim had no defense for his uppercuts, he walked him down and repeatedly hit him with those shots. It was like watching a cartoon with how embarrassingly inept Yildrim was.
Since losing to Chris Eubank Jr, Yildirim has five of his last six contests, but unfortunately, his wins have come against lower-level opposition and not world-class fighters.
Mr. Robot Yildirim’s recent victories:
- Lolenga Mock – 48-years-old
- Jose Antonio Rodriguez Silvencia – a fighter with a 3-31-3 record
- Ryan Ford
- Derek Edwards
- Attila Korda
Yildirim’s last win was two years ago in beating Lolenga Mock in 2018, and that was obviously a long time ago. Besides the fact that Yildirim is coming off a loss to Dirrell, it makes him even less qualified to be the WBC mandatory to take on Canelo.
Yildirim will be coming off of a 2-year layoff when he steps in the ring with Canelo, which obviously won’t help Turkey-born fighter. But even if Yildirim were coming off of a four to six-month break, he’d still be terribly overmatched against Canelo.
Why isn’t Canelo fighting David Benavidez?
An obvious question that boxing fans have is why is the WBC letting #2 ranked Yildirim challenge Canelo rather than #1 David Benavidez (23-0, 20 KOs)? The answer is because Yildirim was already the mandatory challenger, so his ranking isn’t important.
The real question is whether Canelo would be as eager to make his defense of his WBC title if Benavidez, 24, was his mandatory rather than the hapless Yildiim? These are two very, very different types of fighters in terms of size, power, and boxing ability.
Benavidez is highly talented, and arguably the #1 fighter in the super middleweight division. Unfortunately for Benavidez, he lost his WBC 168-lb title last August when he weighed in two pounds over the 168-lb limit at 170 lb for his title defense against Roamer Alexis Angulo.
Benavidez easily beat Angulo by a 10th round stoppage, but his WBC super middleweight was stripped from him because he missed weight.
Once the WBC 168-lb title was vacant, Canelo let the sanctioning body know that he wanted to fight for the belt. The governing body for the WBC immediately voted in favor of letting Canelo scrap for the belt, placing him above Benavidez and many other top contenders.
Canelo never showed interest in wanting to challenge Benavidez when he held the WBC super middleweight title. Would Canelo have shown the same desire to fight for the WBC belt if Benavidez had stayed champion? Many boxing fans think Canelo would have wanted no part of facing Benavidez if he’d still held the WBC belt.
You can make a strong argument that if Canelo wanted to impress his Mexican boxing fans for his fight in February, he would face the unbeaten Benavidez rather than Yildirim.
The amount of interest from fans in a Canelo vs. Benavidez fight would dwarf what we would see from a Canelo-Yildirim match-up. However, there would be a genuine possibility of Canelo losing to Benavidez, and that’s probably the main reason why Alvarez won’t be fighting him.