This Saturday, Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez defends his WBA (Super), WBC and The Ring super-middleweight titles against mandatory challenger Avni Yildirim.
Canelo is the heavy favourite, and outside of Yildirim’s own team and the highly-passionate sports fans in his native Turkey, nobody really believes that the man who was knocked out by Chris Eubank Jr. will trouble the top pound-for-pound fighter on the planet today.
However, if you look beyond simple wins and losses, the champion is risking a tremendous risk in this bout.
It all stems from Canelo’s announced plans to engage in a very busy and potentially-historic 2021. It has only been nine weeks since he last fought, winning those titles just before Christmas by outclassing previously-undefeated Callum Smith. And he has no intentions of stopping there.
Several key figures in Canelo’s career, including Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn, have admitted that the plan is for Alvarez to fight again in early May against WBO super-middle titleholder Billy Joe Saunders. Cinco de Mayo week is a traditionally lucrative one for boxing when elite Latin fighters are involved, and right now Alvarez is second to none, in that respect.
Then, assuming Canelo is two-for-two come the summertime, many expect him to compete on the other big Mexican holiday, the week of their Independence Day in September. IBF champion at 168lbs, Caleb Plant, is the favourite for that spot, assuming he either gets past David Benavidez or simply bides his time for eight more months.
If that all wasn’t enough, there’s a chance Canelo, by this point the undisputed super-middleweight champion of the world if he won all of the above, would defend his crown against a mandatory challenger in December.
While nobody expects Yildirim to derail this plan by beating the best pound-for-pound boxer on the planet, he certainly could spoil the roadmap even in defeat.
For instance, let’s imagine that Yildirim, after 2-3 rounds of being outclassed and feeling the fight already slipping away, decides to fight dirty and leads with the head more than once. Imagine a big clash of heads happened even by accident. Such an incident could have a devastating effect on Canelo’s ambitious plans for the year if he gets lacerated pretty badly.
Or, what if Canelo suffers a muscle injury en route to a comfortable win? A broken bone in a hand, perhaps? There have been plenty of fights in the history of the sport where the winning boxer has stepped out of the ring and straight onto the DL for a month or so.
If Alvarez wants a fellow world champion in early May, he needs a full camp. In other words, he needs to leave the Yildirim fight completely unscathed. And while victory for the champion seems to be a guarantee, nobody can guarantee that he avoids one of a host of minor injuries that would make Saunders in May unlikely.
If Canelo did have to postpone by a few weeks or even a month or so, not only would it hinder earnings on those big nights of the calendar for the Latin community but there’d likely be a domino effect. A delay to one of those fights could mean another also takes place later than hoped. It may even limit exactly how many bouts Canelo can squeeze into 2021.
Pretty much every expert in the sport, including regular DAZN contributors such as Ak & Barak, Chris Mannix, Sergio Mora and Keith Idec, all believe Canelo will win at a canter and do so via knockout. Getting Yildirim out of there could be the safest way to ensure he leaves the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami ready to begin training for the next challenge immediately. Of course, it also means exerting more energy than he perhaps needs to against an Avni Yildirim. It may also cause unnecessary urgency and frustration.
Canelo vs. Yildirim is going to be a really interesting watch this weekend, and not because the result itself will be up in the air — because it probably isn’t. A winning performance isn’t enough for Canelo. A great performance could still come with bad news for the rest of the year.
Simply put, on Feb. 27 Canelo Alvarez needs to be nothing short of perfect, if he wants to guarantee his shot at becoming undisputed super-middleweight champion before the year is out, in the most lucrative and legacy-defining manner possible.