By Jeff Aronow: Canelo Alvarez has three options for his November fight in Caleb Plant, Dmitry Bivol, or Gennadiy Golovkin, says his trainer Eddy Reynoso.
Of those choices, Golovkin can immediately be ruled out for Canelo because he’s fighting WBA middleweight champion Ryota Murata in December.
Either Reynoso wasn’t aware of Golovkin’s fight, or he purposefully threw his name in there to limit Plant or Bivol’s ability to negotiate.
Canelo and Reynoso are clever at negotiating. Plant likely is the only one they want, but they’re not going to let him know it.
“The time got too short for us for a promotion on September 18th,” said Reynoso to RingTV. “When the time got that close, we decided on a decision. What was in our best interest was to make the fight the fourth week of October or maybe the first two weeks of November,” said Reynoso.
That’s got to hurt Canelo to lose the September 18th fight again, as that’s a date that falls on the Mexican Independence Day weekend. Losing it again shows a lack of desire on their part to fight Bivol.
There would have only been six weeks of training time had Canelo stayed on the September 18th date, which might not have been enough.
“Caleb Plant has the last belt at 168, and the negotiations fell apart, but there is a possibility there could be other options in October or November,” said Reynoso.
“But the priority has always been to unify and make history at 168. It could be Caleb Plant; it could be Bivol; it could be GGG (Gennadiy Golovkin). Everything is possible. But I’ll tell you what, Saul will fight before the year ends,” said Reynoso.
It’s fair to say that Bivol and Golovkin aren’t the guys that Canelo wants to fight in November.
Canelo had frozen Golovkin out since his questionable win over him in their rematch three years ago in 2018, and it’s not believable that he would suddenly start showing interest now.
Plant (21-0, 18 KOs) has everything going for him in getting the fight with Canelo, starting with the IBF 168lb title. Canelo wants that belt, but more than that, he clearly wants the $40 million that comes with that fight with Plant.
The Mexican star WON’T make that kind of money fighting Bivol or Golovkin, and those are fights that he would be at risk of losing. Plant is a far lesser threat than those two.
WBA light heavyweight champion Bivol (18-0, 11 KOs) was the fighter Canelo (56-1-2, 38 KOs) was in negotiations to fight on September 18th, but they ran out of time to get the deal done, according to Reynoso.
We don’t know if the time was the true reason for Canelo and Reynoso pulling the plug on the fight with Bivol on September 18th or if they decided that they preferred to face Plant.
Reynoso says Canelo will now be fighting in the last week of October or mid-November. Promoter Eddie Hearn has already stated that Canelo will be fighting in November.
There will be many disappointed boxing fans now that Canelo won’t be fighting Bivol.
They were looking forward to seeing Canelo challenge Bivol for his WBA light heavyweight title, and they saw the fight as a more exciting one than a match against Plant.
Fans want to see Canelo take risks, and he hasn’t been doing that since the GGG fight. You can’t call Canelo’s last five fights risky because he’s faced beatable opponents one after another.
Canelo’s last 5 opponents:
- Billy Joe Saunders
- Avni Yildirim
- Callum Smith
- Daniel Jacobs
- Sergey Kovalev
Bivol would have been a shot in the arm for Canelo’s career, showing boxing fans that he’s not a calculated cherry-picker that they think he is.