Eddie Hearn, so often in Canelo Alvarez’s corner, now hopes for his demise

Eddie Hearn acknowledges that his boxer Edgar Berlanga has to fight an almost perfect fight to emerge victorious against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday night. But he insists that, win or lose, Berlanga will come to fight – something that he asserts can’t be said of all Alvarez opponents.

“He’s got to box out of his skin,” Hearn, Matchroom’s chief, told BoxingScene in Las Vegas on Wednesday. “There are a lot of people that turn up [against Canelo] and are a little bit overawed, right? They look to survive the 12 rounds and say, ‘I went the distance.’ Berlanga won’t do that. He will try and win this fight. It makes it more dangerous for him, right? But at the same time, if you don’t do that, you’re not gonna win, so what’s the fucking point? And I like his spirit. I like his mentality, and he’s gonna come to fight. You have to hope, as well, because Canelo’s so good, that at some point he hasn’t had a great camp or he hasn’t tried that hard in camp, or he’s getting a little bit tired of it all.”

Hearn says he finds a ray of hope in the nature of Canelo’s largely dominant win over Jaime Munguia last time out. Despite dropping his fellow Mexican in the fourth round in May, Alvarez was taken the distance, as he was previously by Jermell Charlo and John Ryder despite scoring knockdowns in the seventh and fifth rounds, respectively.

“I feel like he doesn’t really overexert himself to get a stoppage,” Hearn said. “Like Munguia getting dropped. In the old days, he might have jumped on him, chasing him around the ring. That can be a weakness sometimes. It happened a little bit against Ryder, where he was very dominant and then John kind of found a way into the fight and won maybe three of the last five rounds. Irrelevant to the result, but still, you’ve got to get to the halfway stage in the fight and hope that he physically unravels a little bit.”

Given that Berlanga’s strength is as a power puncher, and given Canelo’s penchant for winning close decisions in Las Vegas, Hearn acknowledges that his man’s best hope of victory is likely inside the distance – although he does see a route for Berlanga to bank some points.

“Canelo’s a good boxer. He doesn’t lose many rounds,” Hearn admitted. “But he can lose rounds because he isn’t always that active. He doesn’t work a lot. But look: I’ve been on the A side of Canelo fights five or six times, and I’ve been on the B side five or six times. And this is the most confident and bullish I’ve been that someone is actually going to go out there and roll the dice.”

As Hearn mentioned, he has worked as Canelo’s promoter on multiple occasions in recent years, and it’s no secret that the two men have a strong working relationship. But he insists there will be no divided loyalties on Saturday night.

“Obviously, I’m a massive fan of Canelo as a person and as a fighter,” Hearn said. “I get a lot of piss taken out of me online: Like, ‘You really want Canelo to win, don’t you?’ But Edgar’s our guy. We signed him. I told him that we were gonna give him two headline fights, and then he was gonna fight Canelo. When Canelo signed the deal with PBC, I did think to myself, ‘It’s gonna be hard to do this,’ and that was actually a really good achievement for us to land the fight, because obviously it’s a massive payday and a massive opportunity. I like Edgar a lot. He’s a very likable guy. He’s really grafted to get to this spot, and I hope he can win on Saturday.”

Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcasted about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com.