By Sean Jones: Canelo Alvarez will be disappointing many boxing fans with his choice for his next opponent on May 7th, according to reports. Salvador Rodriguez of ESPN Knockout says that Canelo’s next fight will be one that the “boxing purists” won’t be happy with.
It shouldn’t be a shock that Canelo’s next opponent will be a disappointment to the boxing purists because he’s been disappointing fans for the last four years with his lackluster opposition.
For Canelo to do anything other than to disappoint would be a shock at this point because he’s become utterly predictable in that area.
Some boxing fans believe Canelo was mentally scarred from his two wars with Gennady Golovkin, leaving the Mexican star unresponsive to what his fans want and detached in an emotionless way, staring with fish-like eyes, revealing the horror of what he went through against the Kazakh in their two wars.
It’s possible that what Canelo went through in his two wars with GGG has left him shell-shocked, battle-scared, not wanting to go back to the front to be in the warzone again with the other troops.
All we can say is Canelo has become risk-averse since his second fight with Golovkin in 2018, and it’s easy to surmise that the contest took something out of the Mexican star, leaving what some fans see as a fighter that is now ONLY interested in cherry-picking.
Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn says Canelo and his trainer Eddy Reynoso will be meeting this week to select an opponent for his May 7th.
Hearn would like for Canelo to go in the direction of trying to become an undisputed champion at 175, but he’s not expected to do that.
It’s believed that Canelo (57-1-2, 39 KOs) will go with Reynoso’s plan for him to move up to cruiserweight to challenge WBC champion Ilunga Makabu for a fifth division title.
It’s a half-baked idea that Reynosos came up with for Canelo that supposedly will strengthen his legacy, but it clearly won’t.
The way to cement a legacy is by beating the elite-level opposition that this era’s boxing fans want to see Canelo fight, not capture division titles against paper champions, which the Mexican star has been focusing on since 2018.
Canelo’s wins over PAPER champions since 2018:
- Rocky Fielding
- Billy Joe Saunders
- Caleb Plant
- Callum Smith
- Sergey Kovalev
None of those guys were anywhere near the elite level, and they weren’t the fighters that the boxing public wanted to see Canelo face.
Kovalev would have been a good choice for Canelo to fight if he’d faced him back in 2012 when he was in his prime, knocking everyone out and looking near unbeatable.
Unfortunately, by the time Canelo did fight Kovalev, the Russian was 36-years-old and had recently been beaten by Andre Ward x 2 and Eleider Alvarez. Essentially, Kovalev was shot to pieces when Canelo hand-picked the old Russian fighter to capture his fourth division world title.
The murderer’s row Canelo chose NOT to fight
- Gennadiy Golovkin
- David Benavidez
- David Morrell Jr
- Demetrius Andrade
- Dmitry Bivol
- Artur Beterbiev
- Joe Smith Jr
While it would be considered admirable for Canelo to go up to cruiserweight to add to his legacy, the 34-year-old Makabu is not the right choice for the Mexican star to impress fans.
Canelo’s problem is that people remembered Makabu’s third-round knockout loss to Tony Bellew in 2016, and that was the last time he fought a talented opponent. All of Makabu’s fights since then have come against beatable opposition.
It will be interesting to see the adverse reaction from boxing fans when Makabu is announced as Canelo’s next opponent. As long as Canelo is ready to ignore the fans’ negative reaction, he should be okay.