What was once a territorial celebration fastly has the potential to become a worldwide boxing fiesta weekend.
There is an opening – along with interest and momentum – to cap off a stirring first weekend in May by creating a third major Cinco de Mayo weekend card, marking the return of Japan’s undisputed super-bantamweight champion Naoya Inoue to Las Vegas to meet the Mexican challenger Alan David Picasso in the sport’s traditional holiday spot.
“It’s a great idea – Las Vegas is used to having fights on Cinco de Mayo weekend, and it would not interfere with any of the other fight times,” said an individual advocating for the tripleheader who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of still-unfinished business.
“The great Inoue meeting a proud representative of Mexico in Picasso in this customary event in which all of these Mexican warriors have fought – Salvador Sanchez, Julio Cesar Chavez, Oscar De La Hoya, Juan Manuel Marquez and Canelo Alvarez … there must be a fight in Las Vegas on that date.”
The Saudi Arabian power broker Turki Alalshikh set up the extravaganza by first negotiating the May 2 doubleheader comeback of antagonists Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney at New York’s Times Square.
Southern California’s Garcia 24-1 (20 KOs) is due to fight the former WBA junior-welterweight champion Rolly Romero 16-2 (13 KOs), and former two-division champion Haney 31-0 (15 KOs) will meet ex-unified 140lbs champion Jose Ramirez 29-2 (18 KOs) in separate bouts intended to set up a rematch in October.
Garcia originally scored three knockdowns to post a majority decision victory over Haney in April 2024, only to see the result downgraded to a no-contest by the New York State Athletic Commission after Garcia submitted three positive test results for the banned performance-enhancing drug ostarine.
The anticipation of that event leads to the long-term Cinco de Mayo fixture Saul “Canelo” Alvarez 62-2-2 (39 KOs) taking his act to Saudi Arabia to headline a card that will be streamed to the US in afternoon hours.
It was recently announced that Alvarez has struck a four-fight agreement with Alalshikh that will open with his bid to reclaim his stance as the undisputed super-middleweight champion against the IBF champion and prohibitive underdog William Scull of Cuba.
Alvarez would then be set to defend his undisputed title against the two-time undisputed and unbeaten four-division champion Terence Crawford in September.
Alvarez’s shift to Alalshikh’s Riyadh Season promotion seemed to leave a void in the US market, considering the Cinco de Mayo tradition of staging prominent boxing matches in Las Vegas, which De La Hoya embraced in 1995 and 2003 before launching a nearly uninterrupted 20-year string of events in 2006 that Floyd Mayweather Jnr and Canelo Alvarez successfully followed.
The jovial Sin City mood routinely creates week-long festivities building up to high-profile Saturday night boxing on The Strip.
Anchoring a Las Vegas card with the Riyadh Season-sponsored Inoue 29-0 (26 KOs) would be a sublime maneuver to top off the smorgasbord of pugilism.
Inoue, 31, has only fought in the US three times previously – twice in pandemic-era cards in Las Vegas in 2020 and 2021, and another time near Los Angeles on an undercard in 2017 of Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez.
His global popularity has boomed since. “The Monster” has risen to become a four-division champion who in 2024 drew 55,000 to the Tokyo Dome for his knockout victory over Mexico’s Luis Nery.
Two fights before that, Inoue stopped the newly crowned WBC featherweight champion Stephen Fulton by eighth-round TKO.
The 24-year-old Picasso 31-0-1 (17 KOs) is the WBC’s number-one-rated contender who scored a third-round knockout victory in December in Tijuana, Mexico over Colombia’s Yehison Cuello.
Inoue was originally pointed to an April date in Las Vegas before his planned December opponent, Sam Goodman, got cut above the eye in sparring and forced a postponement, then withdrew from their late January bout.
Another individual connected to the Inoue-Vegas date said that while multiple conversations and negotiations are required to finalize the May 3 appearance, the fact that its timing will complement the Garcia-Haney doubleheader and Alvarez-to-Saudi-Arabia affair make it an ideal slot to fill.
“There’s no interference with anything else, and bringing a Cinco de Mayo fight to Las Vegas is something this sport has done for so long now … it makes perfect sense,” the individual said.
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