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Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez isn’t even close to done in his pursuit of making history.
The pound-for-pound king and recently crowned undisputed super middleweight champion plans to next set his sights on the cruiserweight division, according to trainer/manager Eddy Reynoso. Guadalajara’s Alvarez was approved by the WBC to next challenge its current champion, Ilunga ‘Junior’ Makabu, following a formal request made by Reynoso during the mandatory challenger portion of the WBC annual convention Tuesday evening in Mexico City.
“We just approved the challenge between Canelo Alvarez and Junior Makabu in cruiserweight,” Mauricio Sulaiman, president of the WBC announced Tuesday.
The move came during discussion of what lies ahead for Alvarez (57-1-2, 39KOs) should he choose to remain at super middleweight, where he has unified all four major titles. The 31-year old Mexican superstar is coming off of an 11th round knockout of Caleb Plant (21-1, 12KOs) to win the IBF belt along with defending the WBA, WBC and WBO titles he has collected all since last December. As is the case with any unified or undisputed champion, the presence of mandatory title defenses becomes a point of conversation.
Alvarez already satisfied his WBC mandatory earlier this year, knocking out Avni Yildirim in the third round of their title fight this past February in Miami Gardens, Florida.
The expectation of seeking a voluntary defense or other opportunities prompted a request from Sampson Lewkowicz, promoter of number-one contender and former two-time WBC titlist David Benavidez (25-0, 22KOs) to enter a title fight next. Many hoped for a showdown between Alvarez and Benavidez as both are coming off of knockout wins on back-to-back weekends, with Benavidez stopping Kyrone Davis inside of seven rounds this past Saturday in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.
Lewkowicz was among the most stunned members at the convention when Reynoso presented his request to the WBC for Alvarez to leapfrog two divisions to a straightaway shot at cruiserweight. Such a fight could take place next May, providing that the WBC allows Makabu to bypass an already ordered mandatory title fight with mandatory challenger Thabiso Mchunu, who asked for a postponement due to not being ready to fight by the end of this year.
Mchunu could find himself on the outside looking in, while Benavidez may have to settle for an interim title fight versus the next highest contender, former IBF middleweight titlist David Lemieux.
Either way, Makabu plans to make the second defense of the WBC cruiserweight title he won nearly two years ago in a January 2020 twelve-round, unanimous decision win over Michael Cieslak. The lone fight and title defense for the Congolese fighter since the pandemic came last December, when Makabu (28-2, 25KOs) scored a seventh-round stoppage of Olanrewaju Durodola. Both fights took place in his homeland of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Should the move to cruiserweight be next for Alvarez, it will come in a division 60 pounds above his fighting weight when he turned pro more than 16 years ago. He has captured world titles at junior middleweight, middleweight, super middleweight and light heavyweight—the latter serving as a one-stop opportunity when he abandoned the WBO light heavyweight title 45 days after knocking out Sergey Kovalev in the 11th round of their November 2019 title clash.
A move to cruiserweight would likely result in the same, though providing Alvarez with the chance to make history for a second straight fight. The win over Plant saw him become the first-ever undisputed champion in the history of the super middleweight division and also the first Latino to do so at any weight.
Capturing a cruiserweight title would render Alvarez as Mexico’s first ever five division champion.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox