Canelo Alvarez has selected Jaime Munguia for his next title defense on May 4th in Las Vegas. ESPN Knockout’s Salvador Rodriguez has reported that Munguia (43-0, 34 KOs).
This is Alvarez’s first fight since his parting of ways with Premier Boxing Champions (PBC), and he’s chosen the well-known, highly-ranked Munguia.
The fight is expected to be shown on DAZN pay-per-view, which is where Canelo had been fighting before leaving to face Jermell Charlo last September for PBC.
Canelo could have stayed with PBC and fought Munguia there, but chose to leave after a disagreement with their plan for him.
Munguia is an adequate opponent for Canelo but far from a great one. Better options would have been David Benavidez, David Morrell Jr., Artur Beterbiev, and Dmitry Bivol. Munguia is more beatable for Canelo than those fighters, but still not easy due to his youth, power and high work rate.
Undisputed Title Defense
Canelo (60-2-2, 39 KOs) will defend his undisputed super middleweight championship against the 27-year-old Munguia in an all-Mexican affair. Munguia earned his shot against Canelo by defeating his former foes John Ryder and Sergiy Derevyanchenko at 168.
It’s no secret Munguia’s entire 11-year career has been built for this fight against Canelo, as he’s been the target from day and that’s been the criticism. Instead of Munguia taking risky fights to prove himself, which resulted in him losing, he maneuvered around them to avoid losing.
Fans didn’t like that Munguia chose not to fight Jermall Charlo, David Morrell Jr., David Benavidez, Demetrius Andrade, and Janibek Alimkhanuly. However, Canelo is no stranger to avoiding dangerous opposition, failing to fight Benavidez, Artur Beterbiev and rematching Dmitry Bivol.
He also didn’t fight Gennadiy Golovkin until he was 36 and showing signs of age. Many fans believe that if Canelo had fought Golovkin when the Kazakh was 32, it would have been a different result.
The End of the PBC Era
Canelo had previously signed with Al Haymon’s PBC for a three-fight deal, but the deal evaporated after just one underperforming fight against Jermell Charlo last September.
The fight failed to bring in the big PPV numbers that fans it had expected to, and Jermell made a mess of things by fighting in a safety-first manner to keep from getting knocked out.
Not surprisingly, PBC wasn’t eager to put on a Canelo-Jermall fight under the existing deal structure that Alvarez had with them. It’s a fight that likely would have lost money and hurt Canelo’s popularity even more than his previous matches against Jermell and John Ryder.
With PBC no longer with Showtime and the financial situation being done with Amazon Prime, the PPV model with that company was different, making it necessary to carefully manage the events to ensure they wouldn’t lose money.