Canelo Alvarez gave fans the bad news last week that he won’t be fighting David Benavidez next May when he returns to the ring to defend his undisputed super middleweight championship.
The King, Canelo, told the media that he would be meeting with PBC boss Al Haymon on Monday to talk about who he would face in May on Cinco de Mayo weekend.
Although Canelo (60-2-2, 39 KOs) didn’t give any ideas about who will be the fortunate fighter that will be blessed with the life-changing money from a fight with him, it’s assumed these will be the three that he’ll pick from Jermall Charlo, Terence Crawford, and Jaime Munguia.
The three candidates for King Canelo’s May fight:
- Jermall Charlo: The unbeaten middleweight champion Jermall (33-0, 22 KOs) has the power & the skills to make an exciting fight against Canelo in May. What he has working against him is his inactivity issues, his last name, and his inability to help sell the fight singlehandedly by trash-talking. Canelo isn’t good at getting fans excited about his fights by trashing his opponents. Jermall is sometimes difficult to understand during his interviews, especially when he looks fatigued. You have to really listen hard to make out what he’s saying, and that won’t work well to create interest in a fight with Canelo.
- Terence Crawford: He has a rematch with Errol Spence that he must get out of the way first before he can fight Canelo. The question is, can a step-aside deal be put together to get Spence out of the way? If not, Crawford is out of the running for a fight with Canelo in May.
- Jaime Munguia: This is another longshot for Canelo because Munguia has a fight against John Ryder on January 27th. If PBC needs Canelo to be someone who will bring in the buys for their first card with Amazon Prime Video PPV, choosing Munguia would be a disaster because he’s not someone that U.S. fans would want to see. Hardcore boxing fans know Munguia really well as the guy with a totally padded record, who arguably should have two defeats from his fights against Dennis Hogan and Sergiy Derevyanchenko. They won’t be interested in paying to watch Canelo destroy Munguia, with his build-up record, filled with tomato cans. Yeah, Canelo vs. Munguia might go over well in Mexico, but that’s not where the PPV buys will be generated for Amazon Prime Video. Canelo needs someone that U.S. fans actually want to see, which essentially rules out Munguia, or at least it should. You never know what Al Haymon of PBC will do. He might think this is a keen idea to let Canelo take a mismatch that immediately does poor numbers on Amazon, getting off on the wrong foot with a new broadcast platform. Some would argue that it would be a continuation of the mismatches that we often saw with PBC’s cards on Showtime.
Benavidez likely took the news hard, as he’s been campaigning for a fight against Canelo for eons, talking about his desire to share the ring with him nonstop to the point where fans & media expect him to bring him up in every interview.
Canelo doesn’t care about Benavidez’s obsession with him, saying, “I am the king, and I can do whatever I want.”
The message that Benavidez should take from this is that he should make himself scarce, stop yapping about Canelo 24/7, and make a career for himself without his need & desire to be helped by the Mexican star.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem possible for Benavidez to get Canelo out of his mind, as he seems to think he needs this fight to become a star and doesn’t.
If Benavidez would just stop fighting old guys and accept the high-risk fights against David Morrell and Dmitry Bivol, he’d become a star without the need to fight Canelo.
Of course, Benavidez would have to win those fights to become a superstar, and that’s the main problem. He might not be able to because his style is pretty simplistic. Standing in front of his opponents, throwing a lot of punches, and getting hit a lot in return.