By Dan Ambrose: Canelo Alvarez is in a situation where he absolutely must face Dmitry Bivol in a rematch next year after his injured hand heals up. If Canelo swerves the Bivol rematch, fans will dump on him royally because they’ll know that he’s chosen to duck the unbeaten Russian.
Canelo may not want to fight Bivol again after his bad experience last May in getting schooled by him, but it’s a fight that the fans want to see & DAZN wants it. If Canelo chooses to avoid Bivol and return to fighting the weak bunch of fighters that he’d been beating from 2018 to 2021.
It’s pretty obvious already that Canelo swerved Bivol by choosing to take a fight against the played-out 40-year-old Gennadiy Golovkin last month on September 17th. Moreover, Canelo made things worse by putting a condition on the rematch with Bivol by saying he must beat Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez on November 5th.
Additionally, Canelo is openly rooting for Ramirez to beat Bivol. The interesting part is if Ramirez wins, he has no chance of fighting Canelo because he says he won’t fight Mexican fighters.
So if Ramirez wins, Canelo is off the hook for a rematch with Bivol, and he can return to fighting the guys that he wants to fight, meaning we could see him attempting to return to badly flawed European fighters like John Ryder.
The boxing public wants to see Canelo (58-2-2, 39 KOs) fight WBA light heavyweight champion Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs) again, and it’s one of the few fights the Mexican star has available to him that will bring in a ton of pay-per-view buys and new subscribers to DAZN.
Canelo isn’t going to be able to sell a fight with John Ryder on PPV, and it’s highly unlikely that DAZN will be eager to pay him huge money to put that mismatch on their network.
DAZN has got to know that the fans won’t want to see Canelo fighting an over-matched fighter from Europe in another cherry pick like all the ones that he accumulated between 2018 and 2021.
The fights that will bring in pay-per-view buys on DAZN are against these guys:
- Dmitry Bivol
- David Benavidez
- Jermall Charlo
Caleb Plant could slide into that group if he defeats Anthony Dirrell, Benavidez, and Charlo like he’s saying he’s going to do. But we know well that Plant will likely swerve the Benevidez & Charlo and just start calling out Canelo nonstop should he win his fight against Dirrell this Saturday night.
Plant isn’t stupid. Old ‘Sweethands’ has got to know Charlo & Benevidez would beat the brakes off him and wreck his career worse than Canelo did.
