Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez vs Terence Crawford: The Undisputed Roller Coaster

September 12 is a Friday, so that was a little unusual. White wanted it that day because September 13 is UFC 320 in Guadalajara, Mexico. Apparently, Alalshikh didn’t like that and removed White from the picture and changed the fight date and location. The fight has been moved to the traditional Saturday, September 13, and the bout will no longer take place in Las Vegas. According to sources, Canelo-Crawford could land in either New York City or Dallas, TX.

Furthermore, Alalshikh announced that Sela would be the promoter for Canelo-Crawford and made no mention of White. Is their relationship in trouble? Time will tell.

How Did They Not Figure This Out Sooner?

This mess was avertible. Alalshikh and White announced their new partnership on March 5. All things considered, they had several months to come up with a plan. UFC 320 was also announced in March. So, how in the world did we get into this pickle? Was there a miscommunication on the date each preferred? Did Alalshikh not understand why White couldn’t support a September 12 date? Or did Turki just not care about what his business partner thinks one way or the other? That can also be true. Alalshikh appears to be a my-way or the highway type of guy, and White is the same way in which he manages his business model. But this has not been smooth.

When you’re just over three months away from the so-called “biggest fight of the year” and don’t have a venue, you haven’t held a press conference or promoted the fight at all, what are we actually doing? If this were Matchroom, Eddie Hearn would be losing his mind. For most people, three months is a long time, but three months is nothing in boxing. Sure, the fight may still happen on September 12. We’re not saying that it won’t, but so much time has been wasted when we could have gotten a step ahead of the game in the last several weeks.

We could have started a press conference tour and aired a few commercials. Imagine a couple of sports fans watching a movie on Amazon Prime and being interrupted by a Canelo-Crawford commercial in the middle of their film. This is what we should be doing. We always talk about gravitating towards the casual fans, but we never try to reach out to them. Furthermore, we frequently drop historic fights and fighters in an attempt to make the event seem bigger, but the product often falls far short of such a distinction. Now, that may not be the case for Canelo-Crawford.

We Could See History Or A Historic Whooping

If Crawford (41-0, 31 KO’s), 37, defeats Alvarez, he would become the first undisputed champion in three weight classes. He became the undisputed junior welterweight world champion in 2017 before moving up to 147 pounds, where he won all four belts in 2023 after knocking out Spence. After claiming a belt at junior middleweight, Crawford made it his goal to move up two more weight classes to challenge Alvarez to become a five-division world champion.

The 34-year-old Alvarez has won world titles in four weight classes. After dropping a unanimous decision to future undisputed light heavyweight world champion Dmitry Bivol in 2022, Alvarez (63-2-2, 39 KOs) moved back down to 168 pounds, where he has won six straight. Canelo is coming off a 12-round unanimous decision win over former IBF titleholder William Scull , but the fight was probably the worst of Alvarez’s historic career. Was Scull that difficult to fight, or has Canelo lost a step? Is Crawford taking on too much? Hopefully, we’ll soon find out when & where Canelo-Crawford takes place.

There’s The Blueprint

Those two paragraphs you read contain more promotional material than Turki and his associates have come up with in the past several months. The difference is that we don’t have a net worth of $2.8 billion. Let’s be a little bit more organized and promote this fight properly. Boxing fans deserve it. And if the event succeeds, we’ll be able to write about something positive for a change.