It’s time to drop Canelo Alvarez from pound-for-pound lists

If the newest reporting captures any inclination toward a preferred fight opponent that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez might have for longer than a few days, he will fight Bruno Surace or Jermall Charlo in May. After five straight decision wins against heavy underdogs, Alvarez remains – no small feat given the depth of disappointment in his recent choices of opponents – the biggest star in boxing.

Since clearing out the super middleweight division in 2021, Canelo has shown no particular interest in defending his belts against the worthiest contenders. Not once has he fought an opponent who even had an argument for being his No. 1 challenger. Yet only the IBF has stripped him of its belt, and Canelo retains possession of the remaining three baubles – and the lineal title.

Surace and Charlo are no more appealing than any other Canelo opponents of recent vintage. They may be even less so: Inactivity clings to the talented Charlo like quicksand, and Surace cannot confidently be classified as a fighter capable of anything more than once landing a bomb on a quality opponent who disregarded defense out of hand.

Pundits have been somewhat at a loss for convincing responses to Canelo’s recent matchmaking. They lament the lack of a David Benavidez fight but justify Alvarez’s decisions and continue to emphasize his impressive legacy. It seems to me that this approach allows the super middleweight champion to have his cake and eat it, too: He is taking easy fights for enormous amounts of money and suffering only half-baked criticism.

Here is a different approach: Drop Alvarez from pound-for-pound lists. If he is still one of the 10 best fighters in the world, going on three years of milquetoast matchmaking has been enough to obscure his current ceiling. The last time Alvarez fought an opponent who had a reasonable chance at the win – Dmitry Bivol in 2022 – he lost. That dislodged Canelo from his spot atop pound-for-pound lists. Refusing to fight his top challengers while also refusing to give up his belts should see him tumble off lists entirely.

A fighter is defined by their career – but, more prominently, by their most recent handful of fights. Canelo is the fighter who chose to spend his 2024 fighting Jaime Munguia and Edgar Berlanga, despite no demand for either fight, and then failed to knock out either. Reasons to keep him on a pound-for-pound list can be found almost exclusively in his accomplishments from 2014 to 2021, a period that is receding further and further into the past.

Some may argue that Gervonta “Tank” Davis deserves the same treatment, but at least he is regularly scoring spectacular knockouts; Canelo has been unable to stop an opponent since 2021. And though Alvarez is fighting well above the weight classes in which he began his career, super middleweight has proven to be his best division. He’s 10-0 at 168.

Canelo is out of excuses, and we do not need to make them for him just because he has long been making eight figures per fight and might soon make nine. His ability to make money is remarkable, but it’s far from a justification for his choice of opponent. He is unimaginably wealthy. At a certain point, clamoring for more dough should be classified not as savvy financial maneuvering but as greed. What good is a fighter already among the richest athletes in the world who continues to squeeze yet more dollars out of his fights? Unless he chooses a compelling opponent, it just means less bang for fans’ bucks.

Knocking Alvarez off pound-for-pound lists might not get him to drop his belts or finally fight David Benavidez, but it would make a statement that elite fighters have to pay a price for marinating in mediocrity. Floyd Mayweather Jnr’s conservative matchmaking and desperation to protect his undefeated record late in his career has already negatively influenced a generation of fighters into trying to achieve star power without meeting their match in the ring. Canelo’s example might talk the next generation of stars into taking their last serious challenge by the age of 32.

If and when Canelo delivers an impressive performance against even a live underdog, he can earn back his spot on the pound-for-pound list. Until then, a star who retains spectacular skill but is intent on fighting well below his ability level is, in rankings of the elite, a waste of space.

Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.