There’s a game going on in boxing, and how it ends, only Saul “Canelo” Alvarez knows.
This week’s move by the WBO to order the two-belt champion Sebastian Fundora to meet WBO interim and WBA junior-middleweight champion Terence Crawford triggered a cycle of what-ifs and other variables all hinged to the face of boxing – the red-headed four-division champion from Mexico.
“[Alvarez] said it all when he said, ‘That order doesn’t matter’,” former 140lbs champion Chris Algieri said on Thursday’s editions of ProBox TV’s Top Stories. “I’m Canelo Alvarez. I can do what I want. If I step in and say I’m going to fight Crawford, the Crawford fight gets made.
“[Alvarez] is in the driver’s seat of boxing; [he’s] the guy at the top of the heap of the treasure.”
That is why Fundora’s promoter Sampson Lewkowicz told BoxingScene on Wednesday that he does not expect four-division champion Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) to make one phone call to discuss a fight with Fundora until he knows whether Alvarez will or won’t consider fighting Crawford.
Alvarez fights Edgar Berlanga on September 14.
The WBO stipulated that the Crawford and Fundora parties have a 30-day deadline to make the bout. If a deal is not struck late by late September, their fight goes to a purse bid – unless one of the fighters opts to turn away from the ordered fight.
While Algieri said “this is nothing new”, boxing’s most popular fighters are empowered to dictate whom they’ll fight and when while dictating terms, and he added: “I believe Canelo relishes that more than [most]… he waves that [king’s] scepter around, ‘I’ll fight you’, and he’s doing what he wants because he can.”
Alvarez told BoxingScene minutes after the WBO order was issued that he didn’t view it as a death blow to a potential Alvarez-Crawford fight.
That’s surely enough of an opening for Crawford to wait out the completion of Alvarez’s bout to see if a battle of four-division champions next is possible.
“[A Fundora fight] is not crazy money he hasn’t seen,” the former welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi said of Crawford on Top Stories. “He’s collected belts already [as an undisputed 140lbs and welterweight champion] and if he loses [to Alvarez] he can say it’s because he moved up two divisions.”
Malignaggi said that Alvarez may be plotting that in response to criticism he’s received for not fighting the unbeaten former super-middleweight champion David Benavidez next. He can potentially turn to Crawford and win back some respect from a portion of casual fight fans.
“He loves to tease you [and] play these games,” Malignaggi said. “This is boxing’s biggest star… the crossover star. Putting the sport first and not himself first; him doing the right thing [is important] because he’s the poster child. When he keeps doing this, [leaving fans to think], ‘OK, he’s cashing out, making suckers of people’, you’re going to make boxing something that’s laughed at by the casuals.”
Algieri said that Alvarez (61-2-2, 39 KOs) might’ve closely inspected Crawford edging the former WBA junior-middleweight champion Israil Madrimov on August 3 in Los Angeles and thought: “He is small.” Crawford would be moving up two further weight classes, but it’s all about Alvarez-generated money, and if the sport’s king decides to determine the outcome with a contractual embrace of Crawford, nothing will be able to stop Alvarez from winning one more lucrative competition.
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