Saul “Canelo” Alvarez answered the question with a straight face on Wednesday afternoon, as if there wasn’t a 6-foot-1, 175-pound elephant in the room.
Premier Boxing Champions’ Ray Flores, the anchor at the press conference, asked Alvarez how he decided to take on big underdog Edgar Berlanga on Saturday night at the nearby T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
“You know, I’ve fought everybody,” Alvarez replied, before referencing a conversation he had with his manager and trainer, Eddy Reynoso. “So I was on vacation and Eddy called me. They were doing the fight and I said, ‘You know, whatever — I don’t care. I’ve fought everybody. And I think it’s a really good fight for the people. Mexico versus Puerto Rico, it’s a lot of history there and I think it’s a great match.”
Bookmakers, most media outlets and the vast majority of boxing fans who aren’t die-hard Alvarez fans vehemently disagree. Mexican Alvarez (61-2-2, 39 KOs) is listed by BetMGM as a 25-1 favorite to defeat Berlanga, a brawny Brooklyn native who has the record (22-0, 17 KOs) and the rankings, but not the requisite conquests, to earn a shot at Alvarez’s WBC and WBO 168-pound championships.
Alvarez’s comments were particularly ridiculous, as even his most loyal supporters know that boxing’s biggest star is not telling the truth.
He hasn’t “fought everybody yet.” The four-weight world champion has mostly avoided David Benavidez, “The Mexican Monster,” over the past two years. He grew so frustrated with Alvarez’s pursuit that he was promoted from super middleweight to light heavyweight earlier this year.
Alvarez, 34, recently downplayed Benavidez’s unremarkable performance in his light heavyweight debut — a 12-round unanimous points win over former WBC 175-pound champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk on June 15 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. That’s Alvarez’s latest rationale for not fighting Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) in the pay-per-view showdown that most consumers seem to want.
Benavidez stopped former WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade (32-1, 19 KOs) and outpointed former IBF super middleweight champion Caleb Plant (22-2, 13 KOs) in his previous two fights. Benavidez, 27, was the WBC’s No. 1 contender for one of Alvarez’s belts seemingly forever and is a two-time WBC super middleweight champion who vacated that belt twice without losing a fight (once after testing positive for cocaine and again because he was overweight).
Phoenix’s Benavidez is far more deserving of a shot at Alvarez’s crown than Berlanga, and possesses the size, power and style to defeat the sport’s undisputed super middleweight champion. However, the proud Alvarez’s evasion of Benavidez is baffling, as the Guadalajara native has defeated bigger and/or better fighters during a celebrated career that will undoubtedly make him a first-ballot International Boxing Hall of Famer.
The historically ambitious Alvarez built his legacy by taking on challenges.
Alvarez was just 23 when he accepted a catchweight of 152 pounds in September 2013 to face Floyd Mayweather, then boxing’s pound-for-pound king, in a fight for Alvarez’s WBC 154-pound title. Mayweather defeated Alvarez easily on points, but the boxer wouldn’t lose again for 8½ years.
During that impressive run, Alvarez convincingly defeated another four-division champion, Puerto Rican icon Miguel Cotto, on points, defeated middleweight knockout artist Gennadiy Golovkin by majority decision in their 12-round rematch, knocked out WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev and dethroned three then-undefeated super middleweight titleholders — Callum Smith, Billy Joe Saunders and Plant — within an 11-month period to become boxing’s fully unified 168-pound champion. Alvarez also established herself as the most bankable female boxer in the United States at the time, both at the gate and on pay-per-view.
His status has allowed him to engage promoters, most notably Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions and Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing, and platforms, most notably Showtime and DAZN, in bidding wars for the right to work with him. Official figures are typically not disclosed, but Alvarez’s last fight, a relatively easy points win over fellow American Jaime Munguia on May 4 at T-Mobile Arena, reportedly generated 600,000 pay-per-view buys.
That kind of success in an industry plagued by piracy proved that Alvarez is still an attraction. Berlanga, however, is widely seen as such an overmatched opponent that it will test even Alvarez’s appeal, especially at an inflated $90 pay-per-view price.
Berlanga, 27, knocked out each of his first 16 professional opponents in the first round. All five of his next fights went the distance before Berlanga knocked out Northern Ireland’s Padraig McCrory (18-1, 9 KOs) in the sixth round of his last fight, which took place on Feb. 24 in Orlando, Florida.
Berlanga’s manager, Keith Connolly, masterfully maneuvered him into this position by negotiating a contractual buyout with former promoter Top Rank. Berlanga has defeated the B-level and C-level opponents who have faced him, but his relative inexperience against championship-caliber fighters and his defensive deficiencies will help Alvarez score his first knockout since stopping Plant in the 11th round of their November 2021 bout at MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Haymon’s company still wanted to guarantee Alvarez a risky $30 million for the complete mismatch, because the company needs to keep doing business with the biggest boxing star in America. PBC has aired just four shows — all on pay-per-view — since its longtime partner Showtime stopped airing boxing at the end of 2023 after 37 years in the sport.
The PBC/Prime Video alliance hasn’t exactly inspired industry insiders to believe that Amazon is willing to make a meaningful investment in boxing, as one of the world’s deepest-pocketed and most widely-reached companies has minimally promoted PBC’s pay-per-view shows and has yet to stream a PBC card for the subscription price. Having Alvarez does give PBC some leverage, if only on a bout-by-bout basis.
Multiple sources have told Yahoo Sports that the Alvarez-Berlanga card could generate at least $15 million in ticket revenue, despite UFC 306’s crosstown competition at the recently opened Sphere. Alvarez’s fans often flock to Las Vegas when he fights around Mexico’s Independence Day (Sept. 16), though Alvarez-Berlanga will need to perform reasonably well on pay-per-view for the event to be profitable.
If it is deemed a financial failure, it will limit Alvarez’s ability to ridiculously claim that he has “fought everyone” when it would once again be painfully obvious that he was ducking Benavidez to fight just anyone.
