Another week of Canelo fights is upon us…and with each one, I lose a little bit of my love for the sport of boxing.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic. What the hell would I do without boxing? How could I afford this luxurious lifestyle here in the mountains of central Mexico? However, the whirlwind around all things Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, in the week of the Canelo fight, highlights all the worst instincts, impulses, habits and blind spots present in the fans and some of the media. of boxing.
Alvarez and his presence at the top of the box office food chain has been a polarizing factor since he became the big deal he is.
His dedicated enemies have not budged an inch from their hardline positions. He is a fraud who was carefully guided to the top and gifted with world titles on every rung of the ladder. He is a perpetual and shameless cherry picker who picks his way past the best opponents and fights stylistically tailored and beatable foes. Oh yeah, and he’s also a cheater, a PED cheater whose clenbuterol bust in 2018 is proof positive that he’s a dirty fighter.
True Canelo believers buy none of the above. They see the criticism as the product of jealousy and frustration that the Mexican proves to be superior over and over again in the face of attacks from critics. They would take a gigantic gulp from their spit bucket if offered the chance.
As is often the case, the truth falls somewhere between the two extremes.
Alvarez HAS been wisely maneuvered around the chessboard. He was absolutely shameless when he began to emerge as a young drawing. Recently, however, that has been less and less the case. His eleven-month run from December 2020 to November 2021 was especially impressive, as he dominated and beat three of the top five super middleweights in the world to become the unified 168-pound catchweight. champion and also walked through a WBC mandatory challenger. In a world where the best fighters usually fight only once or twice a year, Canelo’s feat was outstanding. Also impressive was his work from 2013 to 2018, where he emerged 9-1-1 through a streak that included names like Floyd Mayweather, Austin Trout, Erislandy Lara, Gennady Golovkin (twice) and Miguel Cotto. Yes, there have been some soft touches between his recent work, but I defy you to show me a standout fighter who hasn’t benefited from strategic matchmaking.
As for the PED stuff? Alvarez may be the best most supervised fighter in the world right now, due to what happened in 2018. He has also been in compliance with VADA since 2018. Of course, that does not absolutely guarantee that he is clean and does not use performance-enhancing drugs. performance. . The testing protocol in boxing is far from perfect. But at least he’s following the rules that everyone else follows and remains under a big microscope. And, this might be a topic for another day, but I’m still not so sure that the clenbuterol break before his second fight with Golovkin was an attempt at cheating. There were only traces of the banned substance in his system (consistent with accidental ingestion) about three months after the fight. A subsequent hair follicle test all but confirmed Canelo’s claims that he was not using clenbuterol for weight loss over an extended period or in amounts that would indicate intentional cheating. But, as I said, this is a topic for another day.
At this point (and among this generation of fighters), only a fool with an agenda or an outright idiot would deny Alvarez’s place among the elite of the elite. But the 32-year-old is on the most shaky ground of his career coming into this particular fight week.
He is coming off a decisive and near-dominant loss at the hands of Dmitry Bivol in May in a bid for Bivol’s WBA light heavyweight title. And now he’s coming into his third fight with Gennadiy Golovkin this Saturday and needs a wonderfully dominant exhibition knockout or shutout. Even Canelo’s mighty drawing power won’t survive another controversial points win over the Kazakh or, at worst, a second straight loss.
That’s what makes this particular fight week especially interesting and compelling. He has to win and impress, against a fighter who, even at 40, will be a tough nut to crack and has yet to be convincingly beaten or even buzzed in a fight.
Canelo’s dedicated critics have already built a dead-end dynamic for the target of their mockery. Golovkin is old, Canelo is in his prime, Canelo MUST knock out Golovkin. For them, anything less than a KO win will be a loss for Alvarez. And even a KO win won’t really be a win because Canelo is SUPPOSED to knock out old Triple G.
This, of course, is an unfair setup for Alvarez. But that’s what haters do. Every obstacle is smaller after you jump it, every obstacle overcome was never REALLY an obstacle. Anything that hasn’t been accomplished yet is what REALLY matters, and once it’s accomplished, it wasn’t what needed to be accomplished, anyway. Perpetual dead-end situations pile on top of each other until time finally removes the object of their disdain. And then they piss on their target’s legacy.
You’d think none of this would matter to Alvarez, but few fighters in recent memory seem as sensitive about his boxing legacy as he is. So maybe the criticism affects him to some degree.
What we do know is that this “destroy them, piss on them” attitude among the fandom (and the media, which, in boxing, is really just an extension of the fandom) is not a positive for a sport that is already deeply immersed in cynicism. and relegated to niche status. Being critical is important, but it’s not the same as being cynical and it’s certainly not the same as being petty and bitter.
The attention paid to Alvarez, good and bad and hyper-exaggerated as a big fight looms, highlights everything that’s bad in boxing fan culture, pretty much setting the tone for the flow of the commercial as a whole.
My suggestion?
Just watch the damn fights. Enjoy the action. Criticize when appropriate. Praise when appropriate. Quit taking this shit so personally, like these guys got your sister pregnant and left town with 500 bucks owed to you.
Who knows, maybe when we stop destroying the sport from the inside, we can start building it up to be what it should be.
Do you have something for Magno? Send it here: [email protected]
