By Dan Ambrose: Canelo Alvarez has already started preparing for his undisputed super middleweight championship title defense against Jermall Charlo on September 16th.
Canelo made the logical move in signing with PBC because Matchroom didn’t have anyone for him to fight other than Dmitry Bivol & Edgar Berlanga.
Boxing fans have wanted Canelo to fight Jermall Charlo for years, but now that he’s finally agreed to face him, he’s been dumped on nonstop. The fans don’t like the timing. Charlo hasn’t fought in two years, and he’ll be taking the fight with Canelo without a tune-up.
Other options for Canelo in three-fight deal with PBC
- David Morrell Jr
- Demetrius Andrade
- Errol Spence Jr
- David Benavidez
Morrell is easily the most talented of the bunch and would bring a technical game similar to what Canelo dealt with in his fight against Dmitry Bivol.
Given all the complaining that David Benavidez and his dad Jose Sr have done about Canelo ignoring them, it’s entirely possible that he won’t be selected by Alvarez as one of his three fights with PBC. Just out of spite, Canelo could ignore Benavidez due to the years of him harping.
In looking at the training video, Canelo looked tired from loading up on his shots. In Canelo’s last three fights, he’s gassed out in the second half and struggled mightily.
He will need to improve his cardio to beat Jermall because he will be attacking Canelo the entire fight, looking to finish what John Ryder started.
Charlo (32-0, 22 KOs) will be the first of three opponents for the 32-year-old Canelo as part of his new three-fight deal with PBC. The other two have not been revealed yet.
PBC has two excellent super middleweights for Canelo to fight in 2024, David Benavidez & David Morrel Jr, and they also have Errol Spence Jr.
The venue has still yet to be revealed, but it’s likely to be Las Vegas, where Canelo (59-2-2, 39 KOs) has primarily fought in the last decade.
Canelo only had one move
“Well, first of all, he didn’t announce that he signed a three-fight deal with PBC,” said Dan Rafael to Boxing Social, commenting on Canelo Alvarez signing with PBC for a three-fight deal.
“What he did was he posted a video on his Instagram that was very brief that sort of showed him shadow boxing and in
that short little video, it said, ‘September 2023,’ and he said, ‘I’m back,’ or whatever it was, and then underneath that was the PBC logo.
“Obviously, that means he’s going to be with PPC. So I and others have also been reporting, talking to different people involved, that what he has done is, in fact, signed a three-fight deal with PBC that will commence with that September date against Jermall Charlo, who was the current middleweight WBC champion, who’s going to move up to the next weight class to challenge him for the super middleweight title.
“So he didn’t mention the opponent. He didn’t mention a specific date. It just said September. He didn’t mention any specific three different fights with PBC, but from my talking to at least two different people who are directly involved in making that deal, that is what’s going to
happen.
“You ask do I think it’s a good move for Canelo, and honestly, I think it’s the only move for Canelo, frankly. I mean, I’m sure he got a good deal in doing so, but when you take a look around at the landscape of what was available, keep in mind, of course, that he has been doing his fights for the last several years on a fight by fight basis,” Rafael said.
Matchroom had nothing for Canelo
“He has chosen to work with Eddie Hearn at Matchroom Boxing and his own except for the one fight where he did work with PBC on a one-fight deal that took place for his undisputed fight to unify all the belts against Caleb Plant,” said Rafael.
“He had a good experience working with them. He certainly had worked with Showtime many times before that, earlier in his career, on some of his earlier pay-per-views. So if he wanted to stay with Eddie Hearn, it’s all well and good if you have a friendly relationship and all that but you know Eddie has to have the opponents to offer him.
“Then, because he would have opponents, now you can offer him big money to do those opponents, and the same would go for the DAZN. But look, Eddie’s a good promoter, but he’s also a realist.
“He knows he doesn’t have the horses for Canelo to fight. So how could Eddie and DAZN, in good conscience, offer him a huge amount of money and not have an opponent that could generate any kind of real revenue? Canelo has already run through a lot of the Matchroom guys.
“He’s already beaten John Ryder, he already beat Billy Joe Saunders in unification, and he already beat Callum Smith in a title fight. So he’d gotten to the point where there weren’t a lot of guys of that top-level to fight.
“So, who else is out there? Top Rank doesn’t have anybody for him in that weight class, and I don’t think they were interested in putting up monstrous guarantees for the types of fights that aren’t the big ones and really in the landscape of current boxing today at least in North America, anyway, the only ones that you can look to besides that, he’s not going back to Golden Boy obviously, would have been to talk to Al Haymon who we had a good experience with.
“So they’ve got the interest to do pay-per-view, they have a relationship
with Showtime where they’ve been doing their big fights for a long time on pay-per-view, and they’ve got the opponents, Charlo, David Benavidez, David Morrell, Demetrius Andrade. Those are just four of
them, and I’m sure they could find a few others.
“So that’s what it comes down to. So I think, again, not only did he
make the right decision; he really made the only decision that made sense for him and his career at this stage of the game,” said Rafael.