Canelo Alvarez will defend his undisputed super middleweight championship against Terence Crawford at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on September 13th. The fight needed a large venue to seat what is expected to be a large crowd for the 65,000-seat stadium.
Allegiant Stadium Hosts Canelo-Crawford
It’s not a big surprise that the Canelo-Crawford fight is being staged at the Allegiant Stadium because fans already knew for weeks it was headed there. It was the only place that made sense in Las Vegas.
The event hasn’t heated up yet because there’s still a lot of time before September, but it should as the fight draws nearer. There are a lot of fans who want to see if Canelo (63-2-2, 39 KOs) has enough left in the tank to defeat Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs), who is moving up two weight classes.
It’s a fight that Canelo, 35, has very little to gain legacy-wise, as he’s not facing someone from his own division. Crawford is the one who stands to gain because he’s never fought at 168, and is moving up 14 lbs after a year out of the ring. If he beats Canelo, it gives him a lot of fame, and he can use those bragging rights. Poor Canelo’s legacy would be tarnished forever.
Canelo-Crawford: “Biggest Fight”?
One negative about this event, besides the oddity of Crawford moving up two weight classes, is the undercard. Turki Alalshikh believes that a great undercard is unnecessary, as he considers the Canelo-Crawford main event to be the “biggest fight in boxing.” Fans don’t see it that way. It’s a good fight, but not anything beyond what we’ve seen from Canelo over the last few years.
Turki is going to fill the undercard with hungry fighters, many of them not well known to casual or even hardcore boxing fans.
These are the ones Turki mentioned wanting to put on the Canelo-Crawford undercard:
Junto Nakatani
Christian Mbilli
Mohammed Alakel
Reito Tsutsumi
Justin Viloria
Emiliano Alvarado
Jamar Talley
Abdullah Mason
Nishant Dev
The diamond out of all of these is Abdullah Mason, the unbeaten lightweight contender. He’s outstanding enough to be in the co-feature bout, but he likely won’t be.