This week there is a triple dose of boxing, with the Fatal Fury event in which Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney and Teofimo Lopez will step into the ring separately in Times Square; Canelo Alvarez’s fight against William Scull with the four super middleweight titles on the line in Riyadh; and the duel between Naoya Inoue and Ramon Cardenas for super bantamweight supremacy in Las Vegas. None of the events are held on the same day.
It is certainly striking that an event is to be held in the heart of the Big Apple, where a ring will be set up, but also that Canelo Alvarez is going to fight at six o’clock in the morning. Indeed, the Mexican will step into the ring at the ANB Arena in Riyadh at approximately 06:00 local time. To adapt, the champion arrived in the Saudi capital on April 14, so he will have had almost three weeks of acclimatization, not only to the host country’s time zone, but also to the fight. For his part, William Scull settled in Palma de Mallorca weeks ago to finalize his preparation and be practically in the same time zone as the fight.
Let’s remember that Francis Ngannou claimed that fighting in the early hours of the morning in Riyadh against Anthony Joshua was a big problem for him, even though that fight took place at 1am. He went on to explain that he felt sleepy before stepping into the ring. In this regard, we can also mention when Ilia Topuria fought in Abu Dhabi on his UFC debut. His trainer, Dr. Aldo, told MARCA: “We had to fight at four o’clock in the morning there. So we had to get up at 2am, have the minimum breakfast, get active and train from 3am to 4:30am. And they called him with only eight days notice.” Then there is the case of a ‘disorderly’ Mike Tyson when he faced ‘Buster’ Douglas in Tokyo at around nine o’clock in the morning.
In any case, the reason Canelo will be stepping into the ring at such an unusual time is logically due to television. The Mexican fighter’s main fan base is in North America and this is a pay-per-view event. The schedule has been adjusted to the usual time for these fights on the east and west coasts of the United States and Mexico. It was, in fact, the fighter himself who made sure he could choose the time of his fights in Riyadh before signing the contract that binds him for four fights with Turki Alalshikh.
The president of the World Boxing Council (WBC), Mauricio Sulaiman, referred to this issue: “You have to be well acclimatized, well accustomed. You can’t fool the body’s clock. I hope that both of them arrive in plenty of time to get used to it. Because the air is very heavy in Saudi Arabia. It’s different food, different schedule. Everything starts very late.”
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