If anything is needed to try to face Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez it is confidence, and everything indicates that a new challenger who has just emerged on the Mexican’s horizon, is precisely what he has plenty of.
The Jalisco fighter is in full preparation to face Cuban William Scull in Saudi Arabia next Saturday, May 3, however, that does not mean that the line of boxers who want to get into a ring with him has been broken.
Canelo’s most recent challenger is as unexpected as he is peculiar, and in each of his increasingly frequent appearances on social media, he oozes confidence and a lot of ‘tongue’, as they say colloquially.
This is the native of Kazakhstan, Janibek Alimkhanuly, who has not stopped challenging the Mexican this year, even invoking his ‘new partner’, Sheikh Turki Alalshikh in a post on X: “Turki, give me Canelo, and you will see beautiful boxing, and you will be surprised!” However, before that he had already sent another message: “If he is ready, he is ready, and you know that I am too! (…) hot day, nerves for Canelo“, he wrote.
The Kazakh is very ‘throwing’ and every time he has the opportunity he throws himself into the ring with speeches that he intends to ‘hit’ especially with some promoter, like the one he shouted to the four winds after beating Steve Butler: “Champions and boxing superstars, where are you? I’m waiting; let’s fight. I’m the most avoided boxer. I’m the king of middleweight. Let’s fight!”
Will Canelo give him the chance?
Alimkhanuly has been at least consistent in his claim to face the Mexican fighter, and there are those who claim that his insistence could have a response, but by no means in the next two years, since Canelo has a contract with the Riyadh Season for four fights, of which only the first one is going to be held, which will be the one that will face Scull. And there is no indication that he will ‘waste’ the remaining three on a boxer without much name and weight like him, having as pending subjects Terence Crawford and Dmitry Bivol.
Janibek Alimkhanuly is a Kazakh professional boxer who was born on April 1, 1993, in Zhilandy, Kazakhstan. He is currently the WBO middleweight world champion and is considered one of the best fighters in the division
Alimkhanuly is the unified middleweight champion, he is 31 years old, participated in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and has held the WBO title since 2022 and the IBF title since October 2023. On April 5 in Astana, Kazakhstan, Janibek Alimkhanuly will face French-Congolese Olympian Anauel Ngamissengue, after showing last October quite a bit of skill in his first unified title defense against Andrei Mikhailovich in Australia.
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