By Sean Jones: Canelo Alvarez hasn’t given up on his dream of fighting two-division world champion Oleksandr Usyk in a catchweight at cruiserweight.
When asked about his interest in fighting the unbeaten Usyk (20-0, 13 KOs), Canelo said that he’s open to “that kind of challenge.” He realizes that it will “be difficult,” but he still wants to fight the 2012 Olympic gold medalist Usyk, albeit at a catchweight in the cruiserweight division.
With that said, if Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KOs) loses his trilogy match against Gennadiy Golovkin or his rematch against WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol next May, he can forget about a fight against Usyk.
Canelo, 32, would look like a glutton for punishment if he were to push ahead for a fight against Usyk after losing to Bivol or Golovkin. Moreover, I don’t think the boxing public would be enthralled at the idea of seeing Canelo bulk up to cruiserweight to face Usyk at that point.
“It’s difficult, but I don’t care. I like that kind of challenge,” said Canelo Alvarez to Fighthype when asked about fighting Oleksandr Usyk at cruiserweight.
“It’s going to be difficult, I know, but I love boxing; I love being in that kind of situation,” said Canelo.
If Canelo is going to fight Usyk, he needs to skip the rematch with Bivol because he’ll wreck things for him. Bivol will work Canelo over as he did previously, and then the fans won’t be excited at seeing a Canel-Usyk clash.
Usyk would likely toy with Canelo, outboxing him in the same way that Bivol did last May, but it would be worse because he has more pop in his punches at the cruiserweight level.
If Usyk sat down on his shots in the way that he did against Tony Bellew, he’d flatten Canelo.
Instead of Canelo fighting Usyk, he should focus on the unified light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev because that would be a huge fight. Of course, it wouldn’t mean anything if Canelo loses his rematch with Bivol next May.
To get to a fight against Beterbiev, Canelo would need to defeat Bivol, and that’s a big ask at this point. Although the judges’ scores were quite close at 115-113 x 3, Bivol appeared to beat Canelo by a 10-2 score. It was totally one-sided from start to finish.
