Canelo Alvarez Decides Against Traditional September Fight Date Third Year In A Row
Canelo Alvarez (56-1-2, 38 KOs) has reportedly ditched his plans of fighting in September to take more time for training at his gym in San Diego.
This is the third year in a row when the pound-for-pound king – who is Mexican — won’t fight on Mexican Independence Weekend.
“September 18 became tighter and tighter, and we made the decision today to focus on November,” Matchroom Sports President Eddie Hearn said on Friday.
Alvarez was expected to trade haymakers with Caleb Plant in the September bout, but the talks never progressed despite prolonged negotiations between both boxers.
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The boxing veteran was set to bag a guaranteed purse of $40 million and Plant could have made $10 million had the negotiations not fallen apart at the eleventh hour.
After the cancelled fight, Alvarez and Hearn were aiming for a showdown against light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol.
They were expected to fight at a 172-pound catchweight in September, but the picture is once again unclear after the Mexican superstar is no more interested to return to action in the next month.
Alvarez, whose name is Santos Saúl, has won multiple world championships in four weight classes — light middleweight to light heavyweight. The 31-year-old first debuted in 2005 and has been dominate in the boxing world since.
Nonetheless, Bivol’s manager Vadim Kornilov seems perplexed to see Hearn’s statement Friday.
“We made our deal on our side; we made that deal two weeks ago, and we had an understanding of what was going to happen. We were waiting to see if the Canelo side was going to finalize. Maybe we’ll find out what the reason was at some point,” Kornilov told ESPN.