With a simple “Let’s go brother” and a fist emoji, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez brought to an end months of speculation about what the future holds for the biggest star in boxing. He’s signed a four-fight deal with Riyadh Season, starting with William Scull in Saudi Arabia on May 3, then Terence “Bud” Crawford in Las Vegas in September, then two more fights in Riyadh in 2026.
By the end of the deal, Canelo will be 36, with 70 professional bouts under his belt. It’s entirely possible this is the contract that will see him through to the end of his exceptional fighting career.
And when you’re the cash cow against whom everyone wants to fight, and with whom every promoter and broadcaster wants to work, each major decision you make brings with it winners and losers. Let’s break ‘em down:
Winner: Canelo (especially reputationally)
It’s been a rough couple of years for the rep Alvarez once held as a risk-taking superstar who, mild delay tactics with Gennady Golovkin aside, had ducked nobody up through his loss to Dmitry Bivol in May 2022. He’s now on a run of five straight fights hardly anyone was clamoring for. He’s been operating as if in pure cashout mode. And with all the reports in recent days that a mega-bucks circus fight with Jake Paul was potentially next, we were on the precipice of Canelo confirming every critical word his haters have ever uttered.
It remains to be seen who’s on Alvarez’s 2026 dance card, and specifically whether he’ll give David Benavidez his deserved shot. There will also surely be critics of Canelo taking on the smaller Crawford. And the Scull fight is an absolute joke that will extend to six Canelo’s streak of un-clamored-for contests.
But … compared to facing the YouTuber who was last seen waltzing with 58-year-old Mike Tyson, this is a huge win for the way people view Alvarez. And, while the financial details of his arrangement with Riyadh Season have not been made public, come on, it’s the General Entertainment Authority of Saudi Arabia. Overpaying is what they do. Alvarez gets perceived as behaving like a fighter while cashing in like the super-duper-star he is, and if Paul was just a smoke-screen to make the Scull nonsense feel relatively acceptable, I say, well played, Canelo.
He got his man. Simple as that. He unzipped his duffle bag, whipped out his big wad of cash, and got the job done. Money is no object for Riyadh Season as a promotional entity, which makes it easy for Alalshikh to emerge as a winner in situations like these, but still, he made a deal with the very same fighter to whom he not long ago directed an aggressive “we will eat him” comment. (It’s a helpful reminder that truckloads of cash heal all wounds.)
Yep, Turki gets to parade the most popular boxer in the world around Saudi Arabia, while seemingly damaging competing promoters (more on that in a bit) and inching toward his desired monopolistic rule over the sport (more on that to come too). He’s a massive winner here. Except …
I see one miscalculation: Alalshikh should have encouraged Canelo to enter into a four-fight deal with him that would kick in after Canelo had obliterated Paul. Not that Alvarez needs his profile raised, but still, the eyeballs on a Canelo vs. Paul fight and a Canelo vs. Paul promotion would have enhanced the attention on Canelo vs. Crawford and whatever comes after that.
Since the announcement of Alvarez’s four-fight deal, Alalshikh has gone out of his way to belittle Paul and how silly a fight between he and Alvarez would have been, and he’s not wrong — but he still may have missed an opportunity. (Ya know, if he were running a normal business where profits matter and where making Canelo-Crawford as big a PPV attraction as possible matters.)
Again, the dollar figures are not public information, but one assumes Bud is about to cash the biggest check of his life, and not a moment too soon. He’s 37 years old, the clock is increasing its hand speed, and he’s about to make it six consecutive years in which he competes exactly one time. He may as well make his annual appearance count.
(And for what it’s worth, despite the two-division leap, I think this fight is very winnable for Crawford. To the point that I may even pick him straight-up when the time comes.)
He lost out on a big payday. And now he’s whining about it and getting mocked by Canelo and by Turki. Technically, Paul is a loser here. But then again …
When you have an estimated net worth of $100 million, is having the rug pulled out from under you on a massive payday really that big a deal? I get it, rich dudes generally like becoming even richer, but in this case, there’s a trade-off: Paul gets spared a physical beating.
This was going to be humiliating for him. Knowing what he knows now, would Francis Ngannou still fight Anthony Joshua? Would Paula Jones still fight Tonya Harding? Some beatings are not worth taking, both because of their deleterious physical effect and because the embarrassing elements of the experience threaten to follow you around forever.
Plus, now Jake Paul gets to claim future Hall of Famer Canelo Alvarez is ducking him! The upside to this fight not happening is substantially higher than Paul probably realizes.
Many a premature eulogy for PBC has been written over the years, so I’m not going to make that same mistake and write it now, but … this one does hurt. When it seemed Alvarez vs. Paul was on track, PBC was reported to be a co-promoter. It’s no secret that the post-Showtime era hasn’t gone as smoothly thus far as PBC hoped, that the budget from Amazon Prime to finance non-pay-per-view events has been limited. A Canelo vs. Paul affair seemed the sort of event that could significantly boost PBC’s coffers.
And now that ain’t happening, and Canelo appears locked in to a PBC-free schedule for the next two years. That doesn’t mean we need to check the paper daily for the PBC obituary, but this certainly isn’t the early-2025 news that Al Haymon’s promotional outfit was hoping for.
I mean, I guess? The streamer lost out on a massive event it was hoping to host. Not ideal. But then again, Netflix reported $8.71 billion in net earnings in 2024. Does anyone in the executive suite really care if Canelo vs. Paul went sideways? Wake up Ted Sarandos when the Saudi government outbids him for the final season of Stranger Things.
This one is as straight-forward as they come. Sure, there’s a chance he takes a physical beating almost as one-sided as the one Paul would have taken, but for Scull, he’s doing so for life-changing money, and it’s the sort of beating he’s worked his whole career for. Fighting Canelo Alvarez for millions of dollars is what every fringe-contending super middleweight in the world dreams of.
Winners: Supporters of alphabet shenanigans
All serious boxing fans reading this article know that Alvarez never should have lost one of his 168-pound belts for declining to face unworthy mandatory challenger Scull. But Canelo had a strap stripped just the same. And Scull decisioned Vladimir Shishkin last October to claim it. And the marketing folks say Alvarez-Scull is an easier sell if they’re fighting to unify all the titles (which were already unified anyway) and Canelo-Crawford is bigger if it’s for the unified championship (which it would have been for anyway if Alvarez hadn’t been senselessly stripped of one of his belts). And now here we are.
As long as boxers and promoters continue rewarding the absurdity, the absurdity will continue. Scull getting his payday against Canelo is a big win for all who perpetuate these various practices that insult the intelligence of the fans and chip away at the meaning of the world “champion.”
Losers: Boxing reporters as a whole
I get to exclude myself from this bunch of losers because I’ve never really considered myself a reporter. I’m a writer and an editor who does the bare minimum amount of reporting required to fill those other roles. Reporters do a vital job, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not for me. Chasing scoops seems a dreary, stressful way to earn a living.
Especially if you’re jumping the gun or getting played. Or both, as seemed to be the case with much of the Canelo-Crawford and Canelo-Paul reporting that led up the actual announcement — an announcement that implicitly posed the question, “Why do we even need reporters if the boxers or promoters will just announce all their fights on social media themselves when they’re ready?”
My colleague Elliot Worsell did an excellent job last Friday commenting on all the flaws in the minute-by-minute reporting culture, particularly in this era in which major newsmakers own major news outlets and may or may not be manipulating them. I don’t have much to add to what Elliot wrote. But if and when I do have something to add, make sure you’re following me on BlueSky, where I’ll share my thoughts 30 seconds before you can find them everywhere else.
Winner: David Benavidez … maybe?
I mean, his chances of landing the Canelo fight he’s long pursued didn’t go down with Alvarez signing with Riyadh Season.
Loser: Oleksandr Usyk … maybe?
No, pound-for-pound lists aren’t the most important measure of a boxer’s worth. But the fact is, Usyk is No. 1 on almost all of those lists right now, and a week ago there was no obvious way he could relinquish that throne without being defeated in the ring, but if Crawford should defeat Alvarez at 168 pounds, that probably knocks Usyk down a peg.
Winners: Hardcore boxing fans
The Riyadh Season deal means fans are all-but-guaranteed four more Canelo fights, all of them probably coming against legitimate professional boxers, and all of them probably with deep undercards attached, because that’s how the Saudi promotion does things.
Whatever anyone’s misgivings about the “who” and the “why” behind it, fans have been getting a high percentage of the fights they most want to see — higher than at any other point in my time covering boxing — and the Alvarez deal figures to elevate that percentage.
Losers: Boxing fans worried about a monopoly
Competition is good for the consumer. Monopolies, it follows, are not good for the consumer.
I don’t think it’s likely that Turki Alalshikh will actually manage to kill off all of his competition. But if he does, I suspect we’ll look back on the moment he locked in a deal with the signature superstar in the sport as the inflection point that made Riyadh Season’s total takeover of boxing possible.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].
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