SAN DIEGO – Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez will return to Las Vegas on Cinco de Mayo weekend for the first time in three years.
The four-division champion and pound-for-pound king has settled on T-Mobile Arena as the home for his next fight versus WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol (19-0, 11KOs). The bout will take place live on DAZN Pay-Per-View, the sports streaming service’s first event exclusively on that platform.
Alvarez (57-1-2, 39KOs) will appear at T-Mobile Arena for the sixth time in his career, having headlined the very first boxing event at the venue in May 2016. His last appearance on site came in May 2019, when Alvarez outpointed Daniel Jacobs in their WBA/WBC/IBF middleweight title unification bout. Alvarez was still with Golden Boy Promotions at the time, while Jacobs was represented by Matchroom Boxing who takes the lead for the May 7 event.
“This is my first time promoting Canelo in Las Vegas,” Eddie Hearn, Matchroom Sport chairman told BoxingScene.com. “I’ve been on the other side (with Jacobs, and also having promoted Rocky Fielding who Alvarez beat via third-round knockout in December 2018 at Madison Square Garden). Cinco de Mayo weekend, it’s going to be a massive, massive turnout.”
For Alvarez, it’s a second straight fight in Las Vegas. The Mexican icon from Guadalajara made history in his previous visit, becoming the sport’s first-ever undisputed super middleweight champion following an eleventh-round knockout of Caleb Plant last November at MGM Grand Garden Arena.
The upcoming challenge for Bivol’s light heavyweight title marks Alvarez’s fifteenth career fight in Las Vegas, where he holds three of the five highest-grossing events in boxing history.
Included among the lot are his pair of middleweight championship fights with Gennadiy Golovkin (41-1-1, 36KOs), who is on the back-end of the two-fight deal Alvarez signed with Matchroom and DAZN. Each of their two fights took place at T-Mobile, with their September 2017 meeting ending in a highly questionable twelve-round draw and with Alvarez claiming a majority decision and the WBA/WBC middleweight titles in the rematch.
Wins by Alvarez on May 7 and Golovkin in an April 9 IBF/WBA middleweight title unification match with Ryota Murata (16-2, 13KOs) in Saitama, Japan will set up the trilogy bout eyed for September 17. A location has not yet been selected for that fight; BoxingScene.com has learned that the deal lo land Canelo-Bivol at T-Mobile Arena was reached late Tuesday evening.
Bivol will fight in Las Vegas for just the second time in his career, though his tenth in the United States. The 31-year-old Kyrgyzstan-born boxer—who has lived in St. Petersburg, Russia since age eleven but who trains in California—last fought in Las Vegas in June 2017, immediately preceding his current WBA light heavyweight title reign. The moment came in a fourth-round knockout of Cedric Agnew, going on to knock out Trent Broadhurst in the first-round of their November 2017 title fight in Monte Carlo.
Seven title defenses have followed for Bivol, including a twelve-round decision win over Umar Salamov last December in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox