Canelo taking paycut for Ryder fight in Mexico

By Boxing News - 02/22/2023 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Promoter Eddie Hearn states that Canelo Alvarez will take a pay cut for his next fight against John Ryder in his hometown in Guadalajara, Mexico, on May 6th on DAZN.

It’s a bad sign that Canelo is taking less money for the Ryder fight, as it makes you wonder if star power is on the wane due to his years of taking too many soft jobs to pad his record.

As far as Canelo’ cut in pay for his May 6th fight, the question is, has DAZN chosen not to give him big money for this clash as he’d been getting for past contests?

If that’s the case, does that mean that DAZN is getting tired of paying big money for Canelo to fight opposition that they know won’t bring value to their company regarding new subscribers?

Canelo’s last fight against 40-year-old Gennadiy Golovkin is rumored to have brought in poor PPV numbers on DAZN.

That fight was four years too late in the making, and it was a bizarre move on Canelo’s part to go in that direction following a loss to Dmitry Bivol instead of taking the rematch, which would have likely brought in good numbers.

Canelo not listening to the fans

Some would argue that Canelo has purposefully chosen not to listen to his fans by ignoring their demands for years for him to fight David Benavidez and putting Gennadiy Golovkin on deep freeze until he was 40 years old.

You can compare it to fans going to see a famous music artist and shouting for the performer to play a favorite song. Instead, he ignores them, playing bland numbers that are painful to listen to. That happens. In Canelo’s case, we’ve seen him ignore his fans for the last five years, and now he’s taking a pay cut to fight the unheralded John Ryder in Mexico.

Canelo’s opposition since 2018

Avni Yildirim
Rocky Fielding
Gennadiy Golovkin
Billy Joe Saunders
Sergey Kovalev
Daniel Jacobs
Caleb Plant
Dmitry Bivol

The only good opponent that Canelo has fought in the last five years is WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol (21-0, 11 KOs), and he was totally schooled by him last year.

Interestingly, instead of Canelo choosing to fight a rematch against Bivol as he’d said he would do, he took a tune-up against washed 40-year-old Golovkin in his last fight.

Canelo (58-2-2, 39 KOs) having to take a pay cut for his next fight indicates that he’s not fighting the opposition that the boxing world wants to see by choosing the 34-year-old Ryder (32-5, 18 KOs), who fans have no interest in seeing the Mexican star fight.

Not a good time for another gimme

The timing is bad for Canelo to take another gimme, as he wasted much of the last five years fighting a mix of washed-up ex-champions and British fighters instead of the opposition that fans wanted to see him.

It’s a mistake for Canelo to fight a low-level guy like Ryder, as he’s using up what’s left of his popularity in the boxing world by giving fans another fight they have zero interest in seeing. Over the years, we’ve witnessed Canelo cram a bunch of lesser fights down the throat of fans and veering away from giving them the matches that they wanted to see.

In 2018, when Canelo was at the height of his popularity, he won a controversial 12 round decision over Gennadiy Golovkin. That rivalry was red-hot at the time, but instead of Canelo taking advantage of the fan interest in the GGG clash, he chose to lesser opposition for the next four years, not revisiting the match-up until Golovkin was 40 years old, showing signs of deterioration and not the famous fighter he’d been in the past.

If it’s not too late, Canelo should forget about fighting Ryder on May 6th, and instead of that fight, face the Caleb Plant vs. David Benavidez winner or battle Dmitry Bivol. If those fighters aren’t available, then Canelo should face either Jermall Charlo or David Morrell. Forget about the Ryder fight because no one in the U.S. wants to see that match-up.