Eddie Hearn says Canelo Alvarez’s defeat against Dmitry Bivol last May has “eaten him up” inside to where his priority is to avenge that loss.
Hearn thinks Canelo must attempt to get revenge for the loss to Bivol (21-0, 11 KOs) for the sake of his legacy.
Canelo had a chance to fight Bivol in a rematch last September, but he chose instead to fight 40-year-old Gennadiy Golovkin, who looked totally shot in his recent fights before that match.
It was more than a little troubling that Canelo was actively rooting for Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez to defeat Bivol last Saturday because that indicated that he really isn’t too eager to face his conqueror again.
Before that fight, Canelo had said that if Bivol lost to Ramirez, he wouldn’t give him a rematch. But now that Bivol has beaten Ramirez, Canelo has been strangely quiet, not letting the media know that he wants to face him next.
Some boxing fans believe that Canelo will choose to sit on the sidelines and wait for Bivol to fight IBF/WBC/WBO light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev and root for him to defeat Dmitry to take care of the problem of the need to avenge his loss.
“Saul will have watched that performance, and that defeat will have eaten him up. He’ll want to have to avenge that defeat,” said Eddie Hearn last Saturday night at the post-fight press conference about his belief that Canelo Alvarez will want to avenge his loss to Dmitry Bivol.
“We’ll see what Eddy [Reynoso] and Saul will say, but I would like to make the Canelo rematch because I don’t think Beterbiev will be available until August or September,” said Hearn.
It’ll be interesting to see if Canelo chooses to take the rematch with Bivol or not because he had to have been more than a little intimidated after seeing what he did to the previously unbeaten Zurdo Ramirez.
If Canelo chooses to avoid Bivol, it’s going to make him look bad in the eyes of his boxing fans because they’re expecting him to at least try and avenge that loss.
“I don’t think Dmitry Bivol will wait that long. Right now, he [Canelo] has a chance to avenge a defeat, and I think that would be his priority,” said Hearn.