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By Jimmy James: WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade claimed on a live interview that “Matchroom offered $40M for Canelo to fight me for an undisputed championship.” The claims come as Alvarez said, “he did not want to fight Andrade because he was boring”, during a live verbal altercation in his post-press conference after defeating Billy Joe Saunders.

Andrade also said that the offer was “$5M more” than his fight with Sergey Kovalev, but “Alvarez said no, I don’t want to fight Andrade” and went a different direction. This confirms what many of us boxing aficionados have said for a very long time, and that Alvarez has ducked Andrade for most of his career.

From 2014-19 there are tons of articles that show that Andrade during his super welter journey wanted to fight the Mexican superstar more than once, and that Alvarez never once mentioned his name. Many boxing fans, like myself, speculate that Alvarez’s trainer, Eddy Reynoso never thought he could beat the WBO middleweight champion Andrade who had problems beating Erislandy Lara and never gave him a well-deserved rematch.

If we look at the purses of Alvarez in his fights with Daniel Jacobs, Sergey Kovalev and Billy Joe Saunders they do not exceed $35M. If we look at the purses of Alvarez against Rocky Fielding, Avni Yildrim, James Kirkland, Liam Smith, Alfredo Angulo, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, Amir Khan and other boxers he fought, they range from $15M all the way down to $1.2M, showing complete inconsistency from the Mexican boxers claims that Andrade doesn’t generate enough money.

Alvarez has clearly ducked Andrade and it is beyond reasonable to suggest at this point that the opposite is true. I do not understand why Alvarez would not take the fight, but he clearly must doubt himself enough to take on Kirkland or Liam Smith instead of taking a fight with Andrade. In fact, it makes no sense whatsoever that he calls “Andrade’s style boring” and yet he fights Yildrim and Fielding? Explain that!

The problem is that Alvarez does not like the style of Andrade because he is stylistically difficult to crack, and being a skillful southpaw with good timing, great defense and feather feet does not help. He fought Billy Joe Saunders because Alvarez avoids American undefeated fighters, especially if they are black and technically gifted. He would rather fight English boxers or fighters outside of his prime, with questionable stipulations like rehydration clauses and other conditions that will benefit him, than to fight American undefeated talent.

Erislandy Lara and Sergey Dereyenchenko avoided Andrade in 2017, and presently so have Jaime Munguia, Gennady Golovkin, Jermall Charlo and Billy Joe Saunders, so Alvarez is not the only guilty party, but has equally partaken on the ducking side with the rest of them. Andrade could have fought Jermell Charlo and choose to switch his promotional company at the last moment, which stopped the fight from coming into fruition; it is still not a valid excuse for Jermall not to fight him, despite what happened with his twin brother who didn’t get the fight.

In the end of the day, Alvarez for the real boxing aficionados is probably one of the most controversial middleweight figures in boxing history, and even though he has the approval of the media and all sorts of marketing giants, his career has been subject to scrutiny for choosing certain opponents over others with questionable stipulations. In addition, one thing is for sure, he ducked Andrade whether or not you think his style is boring or not. He sure ducked the being undisputed for $40M according to Andrade.