LAS VEGAS – The beauty of being Saul “Canelo” Alvarez is that, as the most popular fighter in the world and an athlete who has already charted a decorated career course, he has the ability to move among promotions and streaming networks to make the best fights.
As Alvarez, the undisputed super middleweight champion, now moves on to Saturday night’s Premier Boxing Champions on Prime Video pay-per-view main event against Mexican countryman Jaime Munguia at T-Mobile Arena, that freedom allows Alvarez to define what “best” means.
The best fights the sport can offer? Or the best fights for Alavarez financially as he plots the closing bouts of his career?
The 33-year-old Alvarez (60-2-2, 39 KOs) came to something of a fork in the road when the support for his originally planned Saturday opponent, unbeaten WBC middleweight champion Jermall Charlo, began fraying.
Not only was there disappointment in the way Charlo’s junior middleweight-champion twin brother, Jermell, fought with such disinterest in his September loss to Alvarez, but also Jermall didn’t look sharp in defeating Jose Benavidez Jr. in November.
Jermell didn’t even show up for the fight, torpedoing the “brother’s revenge” angle of the bout.
That set in motion discussions between Alvarez and his team, including manager-trainer Eddy Reynoso and PBC founder Al Haymon, as they huddled over the two remaining fights of a three-fight deal that had opened with Jermell Charlo.
The question was posed by PBC: Would Alvarez finish the contract by closing it with a September bout against unbeaten former super middleweight champion David Benavidez (28-0, 24 KOs)?
Alvarez’s financial reward would be immense – “close to nine figures,” a boxing official said.
“He balked at it,” the official, familiar with the negotiations, told BoxingScene on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly discuss these high-level, financial conversations.
Freedom of choice – Alvarez’s ultimate power – was applied.
Since then, Alvarez has discussed that his interest in fighting Benavidez would be at a price ranging between $150 million and $200 million.
That’s raised speculation that Alavrez is talking in not-so-subtle code to Saudi Arabia’s new boxing power broker, Turki Alalshikh, who is funding undisputed heavyweight and light heavyweight title fights over a two-week span starting May 18, and then offering a loaded, cross-promoted U.S. debut card Aug. 3 headlined by unbeaten Terence Crawford, who will seek a fourth division belt against WBA junior middleweight champion Israil Madrimov in Los Angeles.
As he has shown in the ring, Alvarez is astute enough to consider the two or three moves in front of him.
He has expressed verbal fearlessness regarding Benavidez, who will attend Saturday night’s bout, telling ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith on Thursday that “if the money [were] correct, I’d fight [Munguia] and beat that guy [Benavidez] the same night. I don’t care.”
Notice the predicate: “If the money were right …”
“I personally don’t believe he is ducking,” a boxing official familiar with Alvarez’s recent arrangements said. “He’s at a different level and stage of his career now, and he’s a little like Floyd [Mayweather Jr.] in that he’s stubborn.
“The more pressure you put on him, the more he wants to do the opposite. His natural instinct when [cornered] is to say, ‘F*** you.’”
During Thursday’s Alvarez-Munguia undercard news conference at MGM Grand, newly anointed WBA super middleweight mandatory title contender Edgar Berlanga (22-0, 17 KOs) told BoxingScene that he’s “1,000 percent” confident that he will fight a victorious Alvarez in September.
WBA president Gilberto Mendoza told BoxingScene that Berlanga is first in line for Alvarez among the four sanctioning bodies’ top contenders.
“[Berlanga’s mandatory position] certainly doesn’t make the Benavidez fight easier to make,” the boxing official said. “Canelo would have to take the fight or lose a belt. It’s not cherry picking.”
Benavidez, meanwhile, will next fight June 15 in Las Vegas against former light heavyweight titleholder Oleksandr Gvozdyk, and then he’ll have a week to tell the WBC if he wants to remain as Alvarez’s mandatory challenger or stay at 175 pounds to pursue the winner of the June 1 undisputed title fight between champions Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.
This is where Alvarez’s chess moves come into play.
If Benavidez could beat the Bivol-Beterbiev winner, given the expected one-sided outcome of Alvarez-Berlanga, that would create an even more lucrative matchup of two undisputed champions.
Still, for that fight to ever materialize, the key negotiating point (after money) is expected to be weight. There’s concern, for instance, that if Alvarez-Benavidez is a light heavyweight bout that Benavidez will become a “weight bully, and make Canelo feel like he’s fighting a cruiserweight,” which means a rehydration clause will likely be necessary, and the official added: “That’s fair. Canelo’s had some gimmes, but he’s mostly fought tough opposition.”
Before all of this can play out, Alvarez and PBC had to solve how to make Saturday’s date a satisfying financial proposition for Canelo as the promotion’s new broadcast deal with Amazon’s Prime Video neared its launch.
When the solution was at first evasive, Alvarez was given the green light by PBC to explore what Hearn and his streaming arm, DAZN, could offer.
“There was a rush [in the media] to say [Alvarez] left PBC. He never left. It was more a sense of, ‘If you don’t believe the numbers we’re saying, go explore it yourself,’” the official said. “Everyone jumped to the conclusion there was animosity. The reality was, ‘Go see what the market will bear, have the conversations.’ No one told [Alvarez] he was done here.”
What Alvarez found, according to a broadcast official, was that DAZN “was more conservative now, not as willing to write the same checks of $35 million and $40 million” that it previously did for Alvarez.
PBC asserted it paid Alvarez handsomely for a fight with Jermell Charlo that offered lacking interest in the first place and ended up being a bad fight. So amid a selection of possible Cinco de Mayo foes ranging from Munguia to Jermall Charlo to Berlanga, the company expressed that, at some point, it wanted to turn a real profit.
“You can’t keep making second-rate fights and paying top-tier prices,” the boxing official said.
Ultimately, upon returning to PBC, Alvarez selected Munguia (43-0, 34 KOs) as his opponent – choosing a younger, taller former titleholder coming off the 2023 Fight of the Year and trained by the famed Freddie Roach, while also offering an intriguing sidebar story – for Alvarez’s reunion with the former promoter he disdained, Oscar De La Hoya.
PBC and Alvarez reworked their agreement as a one-fight deal.
Prime Video is the primary broadcast platform, with DAZN serving as a supporting streaming distributor that will use its own talent and collect 30 percent of each pay-per-view buy to join De La Hoya’s Golden Boy in paying Munguia his purse, two television officials told BoxingScene.
PBC will pull from the total pay-per-view revenue and live-gate sales to pay Alvarez’s purse.
“DAZN is pleased to agree to a commercial structure with PBC to deliver this event to millions of customers and fans globally, alongside our partners in Golden Boy and Jaime Munguia,” a DAZN spokesman told BoxingScene. “As a company, we will work with any promotional outfit or broadcaster to deliver the best fights for our subscribers and boxing fans. … We have really enjoyed working with PBC on this promotion. We are looking forward to Saturday night, and hope to work with them again in the future.”
Since Berlanga is aligned with Hearn and DAZN, the assumption has been Alvarez will exercise his right to turn back fully to DAZN for that bout.
The DAZN spokesman said, “DAZN have always had a very good relationship with Canelo, and he has played a huge role in our short history to date. DAZN, with our global boxing product, looks to be involved in the biggest fights involving the biggest names – and there are no bigger names than Canelo.”
Yet when BoxingScene on Thursday asked Alvarez’s trainer-manager Reynoso who he expects to work with in the next fight, he said, “PBC and Al Haymon all the way.”
Said the boxing official: “Canelo’s comfortable with Al and all those around [PBC]. That’s important to him, but so is the pure business relationship.
“You can’t really blame him. He’s got limited time, so it’s best to keep making business-driven decisions.”