Canelo Alvarez is not a boxer who spares praise for those who deserve it, but the Mexican champion is usually very selective when it comes to handing out praise among his peers. The super middleweight king has long occupied one of the places of honor in most pound-for-pound boxing rankings, although since he lost to Dmitry Bivol he has not appeared as number one in this kind of lists.
The Mexican has faced good opponents since then (Golovkin, Ryder, Charlo, Munguia and Berlanga), but he has not reached the ceiling in this type of classification. Others such as Crawford, Inoue, Fury and Usyk have succeeded him, although the Jalisco native remains the king of the box office and PPV. If his fight with Terence Crawford were to take place, he could rise again if he were to emerge victorious.
This is a fight that is already being negotiated and has all the makings of becoming a reality, as it is being backed by Sheikh Turki Alalshikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, who is the man behind the scenes in the boxing world. Canelo and Alalshikh have taken a while to meet face to face, but they finally met at The Ring magazine awards party a few days ago in London. There was a good feeling between them from the beginning and Alvarez has already given an interview to The Ring Podcast in which he touched on many topics.
The Mexican acknowledged that he follows the new generations: “I like to see all the young fighters, and especially follow them when they fight on television,” he said. However, in his list he included one more ‘grown up’: “I like Usyk, I like Ryan Garcia, I like Teofimo Lopez, and of course Gervonta Davis. They are good, really special.” Although ‘Tank’ is no longer a child, there is no doubt that the Ukrainian is the exception in that list.
In view of his admiration for Usyk, he was asked about the great heavyweight champion. Would you say that Usyk is the best pound-for-pound fighter, besides you, of course? “Yes, he’s one of them, of course. He’s a very good boxer, I told him yesterday: ‘You’re a damn good fighter, you deserve it'”. The Cat’s performances against Fury do not leave indifferent even the biggest star of pugilism.
Read the full article here
