Via Sean Jones: Canelo Alvarez still hasn’t given up on his dream of taking on two-division world champion Oleksandr Usyk in a cruiserweight final.
When asked about his preference in fighting the undefeated Usyk (20-0, 13 KOs), Canelo said he’s open to “that kind of challenge.” He realizes that it will be “difficult”, but he still wants to fight Usyk, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist, albeit in a hot weight category in the cruiser weight class.
With that said, if Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KOs) loses his three-part match against Gennadiy Golovkin or his rematch with the WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol Next May, he can forget about the fight against Usyk.
Canelo, 32 years old, would look like a gluttony for punishment if he steps up the fight against Usyk after losing to Bivol or Golovkin. Furthermore, I don’t think the boxing public would be enamored with the idea of seeing Canelo go from weight class to cruiser to face Usyk at the time.
“It’s difficult, but I don’t care. I love that kind of challenge“Canelo Alvarez said to Fighthype when asked about playing against Oleksandr Usyk in cruiser rank.
“It’s going to be tough, I know, but I love boxing; I like being in that kind of situation,” said Canelo.
If Canelo is going to fight Usyk, he needs to skip the rematch with Bivol as he will ruin everything for him. Bivol will be working with Canelo as he has done before, and then fans won’t be as excited to see a Canel-Usyk clash.
Usyk will probably toy with Canelo, hitting him the way Bivol did last May, but it will be worse because he has more punches at the cruiserweight level.
If Usyk sat down on his strokes the way he did with Tony Bellew, he would level Canelo.
Instead of Canelo vs Usyk, he should focus on unified light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev because it will be a huge fight. Of course, it won’t make any sense if Canelo loses his rematch against Bivol next May.
To fight against Beterbiev, Canelo will need to defeat Bivol, and that’s a big ask at this point. Although the judges’ scores were fairly close at 115-113 x 3, Bivol appeared to beat Canelo 10-2. It is completely one-way from start to finish.
