Four-belt 168-lb champion Canelo Alvarez and challenger Edgar Berlanga are completing the finishing touches to a fight on September 14th on Mexican Independence Day in the dual broadcast event on DAZN and Prime Video PPV for the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Canelo-Berlanga event will compete with UFC 306 on the same night in Las Vegas at The Sphere. Berlanga will be a good foil for Canelo, who will play the villain role in the promotion due to fans intensely disliking him.
Rather than Canelo (61-2-2, 39 KOs) allowing the UFC to take his Mexican Independence Day weekend for a second consecutive year, he’s selected Berlanga (22-0, 17 KOs) as his opponent to compete against Dana White’s company.
That’s not good for Canelo or the UFC. If Canelo really wanted to mess with the UFC, he’d have chosen David Benavidez, which would have impacted Dana’s company’s profits that night.
According to Mike Coppinger, PBC will be the lead promoter, and Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing also be involved. Matchroom promotes WBA mandatory Berlanga. Canelo is with PBC for this fight.
Canelo-Berlanga isn’t one that fans are excited about because they wanted to see Canelo fight David Benavidez, who has been waiting for a chance to fight Canelo for many years. He’s Canelo’s #1 ranked WBC mandatory and the only guy in the 168-lb division thought to have a chance of beating him.
Berlanga is unbeaten but not viewed as a great talent. He’s viewed as a fighter who has been matched strategically by his previous promoters at Top Rank and his current management, Matchroom.
The Canelo vs. Berlanga matchup will be a Mexico vs. Puerto Rico contest. Berlanga is confident that his Puerto Rican fans in New York will order his fight against Canelo in high numbers. He’s predicting the event will bring in 1 million PPV buys.
If so, that would be incredible because Canelo hasn’t brought in those numbers since his first two fights against Gennadiy Golovkin. Fans are not expected to be very interested in Canelo vs. Berlanga.
Today, Canelo is receiving tremendous criticism on social media about the news of him finalizing a fight with Berlanga because fans view the New Yorker as phony and an inferior fighter with no wins over quality opposition.
Watching Berlanga struggle against 39-year-old Roamier Alexis Angulo, Steve Rolls and Marcelo Coceres, his three best opponents, it’s understandable why fans are so angry that Canelo is fighting him. Berlanga looked awful in those fights.
STOP HATING IT’S BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH 💰 pic.twitter.com/hjc8zhu3NM
— Edgar Berlanga Jr (@EdgarBerlangaJr) July 22, 2024
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