By Sean Jones: WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez and challenger Avni ‘Mr. Robot’ Yildirim both weighed in at an identical 167.6 pounds on Friday for the weigh-in for Saturday’s match in Miami, Florida.
Both fighters looked in great shape, and fully ready for battle on Saturday night at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. 15,000 fans are expended to attend this match and should be loud compared to quiet indoor fights that boxing fans have watched since the pandemic began over a year ago.
With Canelo such a huge favorite, it’ll be interesting to see if he can escape the fight without suffering a loss against the highly motivated Yildirim.
Canelo (54-1-2, 36 KOs) looked cut-up at the weight, and not nearly as bulky as he was when he challenged former WBO light heavyweight
“We trained hard, we’re ready. We did everything in camp to prepare ourselves on Saturday, and to move to the road to unify and make history,” said trainer Eddy Reynoso to Boxing Social about Canelo.
“He’s very strong and very powerful, so we have to see that and avoid that and be smart about it inside the ring,” said Reynoso about Avni Yildirim.
“First things first, we got to come out with this victory. It’s like a package deal type of fight that we did. So first with this fight, and then we’ll see in May with Saunders,” said Reynoso.
Canelo, 30, can’t afford to overlook Yildirim towards his precious unification fight against WBO super middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders that is being pegged for May 8th. Yildirim is a clone of Gennady Golovkin with how he fights, and he has just as good punching power.
One major downside is the loss of the co-feature bout between WBC flyweight champion Julio Cesar Martinez and McWilliams Arroyo. That fight had to be scratched on Thursday after Martinez (17-1 13 KOs) revealed that he’s suffered a fractured right metacarpal hone.
Arroyo had been hoping to still fight on the ard, possibly fr the interim WBC 112-lb title if an opponent could be found in time. But as of Friday, he’s McWilliams isn’t on the card.
Losing the Martinez vs. Arroyo fight hurts the card, but hopefully, the main event will make up for the loss of what arguably was the best match-up on paper.
Other weights on the card:
- Zhilei Zhang 256.2 vs. Jerry Forrest 236
- Diego Pacheco 168 vs. Rodolfo Gomez 167
- Alexis Espino 167.8 vs. Ashton Sykes 164.2
- Aaron Aponte 139.8 vs. Harry Gigliotti 139.2
- Keyshawn Davis 136.6 vs. Lester Brown 134.6
