Canelo Alvarez met with WBC cruiserweight champion Ilunga Makabu on Thursday at the World Boxing Council Convention in Mexico to begin hyping their likely title fight in early 2022.
Canelo (57-1-2, 39 KOs) and the much bigger 6’0″ Makabu (28-2, 25 KOs) stood for a face-off and shook hands. It was all PR stuff to get boxing fans interested in seeing the superstar Canelo move up to cruiserweight early next year in an attempt too capture his fifth division world title.
Last Tuesday, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman announced that the governing body had approved Canelo to move up from super middleweight where he’s the undisputed champion to challenge the 34-year-old Makabu for his WBC cruiserweight itle.
Canelo has taken plenty of flak from the boxing public, as they wanted to see him fight David Benavidez, Jermall Charlo, Artur Beterbiev or Gennadiy Golovkin next.
Those are fighters that are well known and highly respected. In contrast, Makabu isn’t well known, and he’s NOT viewed as the best or even the second best in the cruiserweight division.
You can argue that Makabu is closer to the ninth or tenth best fighter at cruiserweight. Yeah, Makabu holds the WBC title, but only because he fought a vulnerable guy in Michal Cieslak.
Had Makabu needed to go through Lawrence Okolie, Mairis Briedis or Arsen Goulamirian to win his WBC title, to name just a few, he likely would have lost badly.
“I think good for him that he wants to go up to cruiserweight, but if he wants to keep doing that stuff and keep going up, up, up, I don’t want to hear it. Fight [Artur] Beterbiev,” said Max Kellerman to Fighthype in talking about Canelo Alvarez.
“Moving up to cruiserweight to beat a solid guy is a tremendous accomplishment,” Kellerman continued about Canelo looking to face the little-known Makabu.
“The [WBC] belt doesn’t really mean anything. Is he fighting the number one fighter in the division? He [Canelo] did not do that at light heavyweight. He’s done it at super middleweight, and he did it at middleweight, and he was obviously the best junior middleweight in the world.
“That’s a lot different than just grabbing a belt. That’s just a [self] promotional tool. You can win a bowl game in college football but it doesn’t make you the National Champ.
“So I’m talking about who has proven themselves the man in the division, this will not have proven it at cruiserweight.
“Why not Benavidez? Absolutely. Canelo vs. Beterbiev because Beterbiev has proven himself on a world class level more than Benavidez has.
Beterbiev is the best light heavyweight in the world if it’s not [Dmitry] Bivol, but in terms of styles, it would be a more crowd-pleasing fight against Canelo.
But if Benavidez gets in and proves himself on that level great. Even if he doesn’t, I’d love to see it. Beterbiev and Benavidez? It would be a war, of course.
“I think Canelo would be the favorite to beat Beterbiev, I’d make him the favorite, but that is, other than Crawford and Spence, the best fight you can make in boxing.
“Canelo and Beterbiev is like [Vasily] Jirov and [James] Toney,” said Kellerman. “One guy just wants to come at you so he can break you down and the other guy wants you to come at him so he can break you down. So it’s the perfect match-up.
“Good for Canelo, go up to cruiserweight and try and win a belt there, but I want to see Canelo and Beterbiev,” said Kellerman.
It’s unclear whether Kellerman is banging the drum so loudly for Canelo-Beterbiev because Beterbiev fights on the same network he works with in ESPN or if he truly believes the Russian fighter would be his toughest test. The way that Kellerman dismissed David Benavidez so quickly suggests to this writer that he’s high on Beterbiev because he fights on ESPN.
Deontay Wilder has lost millions because of the type of people in society who are afraid of Deontay Wilders talent. Evil, hatefull, dirty minded low life’s. Ruining society and getting away with anything they want to do no matter how unethical and criminal and hurtfully. The only thing they understand is force, then they will.back down in your face only to join forces with other like minded low life’s and come to you in another way. I been to las Vegas 7 times and bow I am boycotting all events, none of our money should go to these guys. It’s not much, but I still got my money.
What ever happened to Deontay Wilder? Did he ever recover from the attempted murder fury was guilty of by crushing Deontay Wilders skull with an eggweight loaded glove? Was there any permanent neurological damage as a result of the glove tampering? Howany awards was the fraudulent fury given for being caught on tape cheating? All we hear are lies about Deontay Wilder. Deontay Wilder is a little guy compared to the other guys in the heavyweight division and he just kept on outclassing all of them until no padding ne.would fight him.
Any one of his called experts that think you know about boxing want to say just one word, I will show you photos to remind you that the finger’s and eggweight clearly visible through the leather glove. You’re all a bunch of invasive foreigners coming to America because you got kicked out of your own country for cheating tactics again and again and again and again.
We like the fights that are fixed involving fury because he is cheating so obviously and overtly it reminds me of professional wrestling. I really liked it when fury said,” I was born to cheat.” And the British fanboys just cheered and cheered. Iv never been prouder of being a white man from town.
Obviously this fight is fixed too.
“Only in America” Don King
Canelo Alvarez and fury are seeking to get into the record books as extensively as they can. This is why they shy away from the best competitors, ambushing the unsuspecting opposition works well for them. Then after the dust settles fury’s in a pub talking about”, so I grabs ahold of da guy, I says, I pay in arse whoppings, an I comencé peppin em in there.”
We all know these two pay off Maricio Suliaman who made enough to retire off of the franchise belt sales alone.
Canelo need to fight a real fighter he cherry picking this easy fight
See, they’re about the same height? At the weigh-in, they’ll be about the same weight but not the same skill ser.
Easy work
Llunga Makabu was given the belt that Oleksandr Usyk vacated to fight Anthony Joshua. His skill set is not at a very high level.
Both Canelo and fury are proven drug cheats.
And we are tired of hearing from Bob arum,” I’d like to see fury fight Dillian Whyte in the UK.” Bob knows fury’s boxing license in the UK has been suspended permanently for cheating so many times Feeding the ignorant false info. Tell them the truth, fury is a fraudulent interloping foreign intruder who couldn’t whoop Deontay Wilder ever without cheating. Deontay Wilder, you got to cheat Deontay Wilder to beat Deontay Wilder.
We are tired of the utube videos breaking down the fighting style of fury, attempting to make a.case for superior boxing technique as an explanation for his being the WBC belt holder.
It’s not so complicated. The boxing establishment glosses over, sweeps under the rug, looks the other way, and plays dumb. Eggweight loaded gloves padding repositioning advantage floppy gloves flopping around all over the place camera’s rolling bribed judges and referee’s spiked water holding neck wrenching tripping rabbit punching and no padding in his gloves. Simply put, fury’s up to the same old thing that got his license suspended permanently in the UK, cheating tactics again and again and again.
Deontay Wilder is the best heavyweight champion that ever lived without question.
Have any of you ever have to gain 20 pounds. To fight for a championship. I think not. As we have seen this past month. With champions losing their titles. Canelo and his team are very smart. They know what they are doing. Quit hating. He has earned the right to fight whom ever he pleases. Don’t hear you guys complaining about Labron recruiting players to win a championship. You wanna give Canelo are hard time. Then start with Labron.
You got that right 👍
Putting 20 pounds on isn’t hard for canelo, he walks around at 210 normal weight. When Canelo moves up in weight to fight, he puts it into the contract that his opponent has to pay one million dollars for every pound of weight gained after the weigh-in.
So they are weak and he gets to eat well and put on the weight.
Easy work.
Who’s “Labron” ?? 🤣
It’s LeBron James 😏