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World Super Middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (57-1-2, 39 KO) has done a lot already in his career. He’s already only the third former Jr. middleweight titlist to win a major sanctioning body belt at light heavyweight, joining the exceptional company of Thomas Hearns and Mike McCallum. This Saturday (DAZN, 8 PM EST), Alvarez will try to make it a club of two with Hearns as the only former Jr. middleweight titlists to win light heavyweight belts twice.
WBA light heavyweight titlist Dmitry Bivol (19-0, 11 KO) stands in the way.
For Alvarez, who also held the lineal and partially unified middleweight crown at one time, it’s another mountain to conquer. At 31, he hasn’t run out of them.
While one should never say never, let’s throw this one out there: win or lose this weekend, win or lose over each of their next few fights…
Alvarez is never going to move up to heavyweight to challenge unified heavyweight titlist Oleksandr Usyk (19-0, 13 KO).
There has been some chatter about it in the lead up to Bivol and, sure, why not? In this ceaseless need-for-content era, anything that catches a headline is probably fair game. Games of what if come and go easily.
There’s no guarantee Usyk will even be a unified heavyweight titlist past the summer. Usyk will have to repeat his victory over Anthony Joshua this summer first and Alvarez is slated for a third fight with middleweight rival Gennadiy Golovkin.
It would be a lot easier to envision Alvarez attempting to four-belt his second weight class against the winner of the coming light heavyweight unification between lineal and WBC/IBF titlist Artur Beterbiev (17-0, 17 KO) and WBO titlist Joe Smith Jr. (28-3, 22 KO). If Alvarez wins this weekend, he’ll have two top notch victories in the class having already previously conquered Sergey Kovalev.
Usyk, the former undisputed cruiserweight champion whose management suggested this week their charge could get back near the 200 lb. mark for a catchweight, has weighed roughly between 215-221 lbs. since moving up. Alvarez’s career high was 174 ½ for Kovalev and we’ll see what he scales this weekend.
Never say never?
Never.
Unless it’s not never after all.
As Alvarez continues to move around between super middleweight and light heavyweight, what should be factors against him have not been. Again this weekend, Alvarez will be shorter, by nearly four inches. According to BoxRec, Alvarez is 5’8 with a 70’ inch reach. It’s slightly taller and longer than Hall of Fame former light heavyweight and cruiserweight titlist Dwight Muhammad Qawi.
Height and reach aren’t the same as natural belonging in a weight class. Qawi turned professional at light heavyweight at the age of 25. At the same age, Alvarez was just starting to flirt with middleweight. When talk of Alvarez chasing Usyk comes up though, it’s not Qawi who comes to mind.
It’s Mickey Walker.
Analogies and comparisons are highly imperfect. It’s still what comes to mind. The legendary Walker won the welterweight and middleweight titles in the 1920s, unsuccessfully challenged for the light heavyweight crown, and then battled a number of top heavyweight contenders.
Like Alvarez, Walker began his career as a teenage lightweight before growing into higher weights. Walker is listed as having been 5’7 with a 67’ inch reach, slightly smaller than Alvarez. It didn’t stop the “Toy Bulldog” from an appetite bigger than his stomach.
Walker beat notable heavyweights of his time like Johnny Risko, King Levinsky, Paulino Uzcudun, and Bearcat Wright. Heavyweights then were typically smaller, but so was Walker, regularly giving up between 25 and 40 pounds. In what might have been his most remarkable fight at heavyweight, Walker held Jack Sharkey to a draw giving up over thirty pounds on the scale.
Two fights later, Sharkey won the heavyweight title from Max Schmeling.
Sure, Schmeling later made mincemeat of Walker and sent him back to compete mainly at light heavyweight, but Walker made a go of it for a while in boxing’s flagship division.
If Alvarez wins this weekend, and Bivol is going to be a tough out, he will have decisions to make. Golovkin is on the schedule and Showtime/PBC will likely be back next year with big dollar offers to stay fighting men more Alvarez’s size like David Benavidez and Jermall Charlo.
Any talk about Usyk could evaporate as quickly as the quickly discarded idea of challenging cruiserweight titlist Illunga Makabu.
But every time Alvarez knocks off a prominent light heavyweight and doesn’t wave off the possibility of testing heavyweight waters, never could get closer to maybe.
Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.