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In last week’s Notes from the Boxing Underground, I kind of hyper-focused on the blood orgy of misinformation surrounding the Turki Alalshikh/Canelo Alvarez/Ring Magazine situation and the lying liars who intentionally lied to us about it all.
Lost in that glorious beatdown, though, was talk about Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and his deal, which includes a fight this May in Saudi Arabia, a September fight with Terence Crawford in Las Vegas, and then two 2026 Riyadh Season fights in Saudi Arabia (in February and October).
I’ve been saying this well before he signed on with a murderous monarchy, but Alvarez has become increasingly irrelevant. Getting beaten up by Dmitry Bivol in May of 2022 seems to have sucked the last bit of competitive drive from his freckled gut and he’s been coasting ever since.
Pre-Bivol Canelo benefited from cleverly calculated matchmaking, but at least there was the pretense of actual competition. The post-Bivol Canelo has given zero fucks about even pretending to care about boxing.
He half-assed his way through a faded, jaded Gennadiy Golovkin, who was offered up as someone ready to be taken out. He half-assed his way through journeyman John Ryder. He carried a frozen junior middleweight, Jermell Charlo, over twelve rounds. He had to work a bit versus Jaime Munguia, but was never willing to step on the gas and even try for a conclusive finish. He also half-assed his way against a wildly overmatched Edgar Berlanga, who he should’ve knocked out in four rounds or less. This current version of Canelo Alvarez just wants your money, feels entitled to it, and expects you to thank him for the privilege of being fleeced.
That’s why him signing a multi-fight deal with Saudi Arabia shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. If all he cares about is showing up to collect a paycheck, of course he’s going to stage dive at the largest money offer. And, yeah, fuck the fans if he can get that loot without having to even pretend to cater to them. This is a boxing whore’s ultimate dream– big money and zero accountability, working for the biggest money mark the sport has ever seen.
Canelo ditched his Mexican fans and proud Mexicanismo as fast as it took Turki to convert riyals to pesos. With the exception of the Crawford fight in September, he’s taking his act to Saudi Arabia, a half-planet away from where his most loyal fans can actually see him. And, come 2026, he’s also ditching his Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day dates in favor of Saudi festival dates. I wouldn’t be surprised to see shawarma meat replacing carne al pastor in his tacos.
Alvarez had been negotiating a fight with influencer/novice boxer Jake Paul before swerving to sign with the Saudis. After the deal was announced, he’d double back to deny that he’d ever be involved with someone like Paul.
“Hey guys, don’t pay attention to anything of this fucking YouTuber,” Alvarez said in a video posted by the Turki-owned Ring Magazine. “I just fight real fighters. No fucking around with Canelo. Come on, let’s go.”
Paul, of course, would fire back via social media video, revealing details of their negotiations and even posting a screen shot of a Canelo and Paul-signed contract.
“Oh, Canelo, you puta. Time to expose him,” Paul said. “So, we had a signed contract to fight. Here, you can see Canelo’s signature and my signature to the right. Claiming he’s not fighting YouTubers? Bullshit. Look at the poster. We were announcing Tuesday, Feb. 11. Claiming he fights real fighters, but he fighting Crawford, a 135-pound fighter, and running from a real fighter like David Benavidez, you bitch.
“The truth is, you can be bought. You’re a money-hungry squirrel chasing your next nut. The truth is, the sportswashing shady characters are paying you hundreds of millions of dollars to stop our fight from happening because they couldn’t fathom the fact that they can’t create a bigger fight than me and you. Al Haymon has made you hundreds of millions of dollars, and you turned your back on him for this check. Disloyal….You call me a YouTuber, but you’ve never had a boxing match as big as mine.”
I hate to admit this, but, in my mind, I actually kinda slow-clapped this comeback.
Canelo will be fighting William Scull in his first bout as star attraction in the Saudi zoo. And, sorry, Scull isn’t all that much more of a “real” fighter than Jake Paul. As a matter of fact, opening betting odds make the light-hitting Cuba-born, Germany-fed Scull a bigger underdog than what Paul would’ve been.
Even with a paper IBF super middleweight belt around his waist, Scull represents the weakest Canelo opponent since Canelo was fighting in Mexican state fairs. So much for Turki wanting only the best vs. the best.
And, while we’re at it, let’s just be real about the “big” one after this Scull thrashing.
The Terence Crawford fight is only slightly less of a gimmick event than a Jake Paul fight. Crawford, a former lightweight, junior welterweight, and welterweight champ, who just won his first junior middleweight bout in a somewhat shaky performance, shouldn’t be getting a shot at Alvarez– especially considering that there are clearly better and more deserving opponents out there for both Crawford and Alvarez.
The Omaha native is only getting this crack at Canelo because of his status as Turki’s man-crush/pet project and because Canelo believes this to be a winnable fight against a smaller man. Boy, will it be funny when Crawford actually wins.
Anyway, losing even an increasingly irrelevant Canelo is going to be tough for the American boxing scene, which has lost so much already since promoters started selling themselves into eventual extinction for a taste of Turki bucks.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that the guy “saving” boxing is actually just strip-mining it and shipping the viable pieces back home. Boxing is a star and event-driven sport and, without events to actually attend or stars to build through those events…well…we’re fucked.
But we’re living in the age of powerful people playing the less powerful for suckers– and the suckers actually thanking them for it. So, what’s at all surprising about the super rich Saudis making a super rich Canelo even richer, while sucker-punched North American fans are asked to subsidize the whole thing?
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com
