For the first time in 12 years, Mexican icon and undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez returns to fight in his home country this weekend with no shortage of questions regarding his future.
Is Alvarez (58-2-2, 39 KOs) still the same fighter after losing his No. 1 pound-for-pound ranking with a loss to light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol last April (and a subsequent ho-hum decision over faded rival Gennadiy Golovkin four months later)? Has unbeaten lightweight Gervonta "Tank" Davis eclipsed the 32-year-old star as the biggest and brightest in the sport? And where will Alvarez go next after he, presumably, defeats WBO mandatory challenger and massive underdog John Ryder (32-5, 18 KOs) on Saturday (DAZN PPV, 7 p.m. ET)?
Not to mention, why Mexico, after Alvarez promoter Eddie Hearn fielded much more lucrative offers for London, Las Vegas and Saudi Arabia? And why now?
Luckily for fans, Alvarez has provided answers to most of the above inquiries during recent media scrums ahead of the fight. The others, of course, can only be answered inside the ring at Akron Stadium, just outside of Alvarez's home city of Guadalajara, where a crowd of 50,000 is expected to gather to welcome arguably the greatest prizefighter in the nation's long and decorated history.
Alvarez, who will enter as upwards of a -1600 betting favorite, has enjoyed a somewhat rocky relationship with his home nation ahead of a fight that was anything but easy to make. But there was zero hesitation from the fighter when asked during his media day in San Diego last week whether it was worth it.
"Since 2011, I've wanted to come back and fight in Mexico but it's a little bit difficult to make a [big] fight here," Alvarez said. "But when you want something, you can do it. It's the correct time to come to Mexico and bring this fight to my people, who have supported me from the beginning."
Despite the logistical issues of making the fight, it's clear Alvarez did it because he badly wanted to. This was after turning down astronomic offers elsewhere to accept an offer that was reportedly still eight figures but much lower than the purses Alvarez, who was named by Forbes on Wednesday as the fifth highest-earning pro athlete in 2022 ($110 million), is used to.
"Sometimes it's not about the money," Alvarez said. "Sometimes it's about pride, and it's that time. I don't need to say how much I lose because I don't care. I feel good to fight in my hometown and I'm proud."
Seeing Alvarez return to Mexico came as a surprise to some because of how outspoken he has been regarding key issues.
In 2018, Alvarez spent most of fight week promoting his title bout against Rocky Fielding in New York by quietly negotiating his kidnapped brother's ransom in Mexico. The news didn't surface until three years later when Alvarez admitted he chose not to notify the Mexican government out of fear that members of the police force were involved in the crime.
Alvarez also spoke up last week about Mexico's lack of support for its own amateur athletic system, citing not only a lack of Olympic medal success (Mexico has won just a single bronze since 2000) but the government not following through on promised financial support for its athletes. It's the latter that led Alvarez, the youngest of seven brothers who all became boxers, to turn pro at age 15 in 2005.
"When I was going to represent [my home state of] Jalisco in the national Olympics, if you won gold medals, they would give you so much money monthly," Alvarez said. "But it never came. I never received a single penny, they stole everything. They care about very few things but they do not support sports, much less boxing. [The sport] that has given the country the most glory, they steal everything."
Ryder (32-5, 18 KOs), a 34-year-old southpaw from London, has won four straight since a disputed 2019 decision loss to Callum Smith (for the 168-pound title Alvarez took from Smith the following year). The most impressive parts of that win streak came in 2022 when Ryder edged former middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs by split decision before stopping unbeaten Zach Parker (who retired with a hand injury) to secure a shot at Alvarez.
While Ryder is both durable and aggressive on the inside, he isn't expected to provide much resistance for Alvarez even if the 18-year pro is slowing down a bit, something that has been pondered by Alvarez's few critics after he had trouble dealing with the clean power punching of Bivol at 175 pounds before looking noticeably flat in edging out Golovkin.
The whole debate over what's next for Alvarez started to heat up in March when unbeaten David Benavidez, a former two-time WBC super middleweight champion who never lost his belt inside the ring, scored a breakthrough pay-per-view victory over Caleb Plant before publicly challenging Alvarez for all four of his titles.
Yet despite all of the hoopla surrounding the 168-pound division, including unbeaten David Morrell Jr.'s arrival and the teased threat of WBC middleweight champion Jermall Charlo moving up for a big fight, the competitor within Alvarez simply won't let him look past a second shot at Bivol this September in Alvarez's preferred slot during Mexican Independence Day Weekend.
"That's my goal," Alvarez said this week. "Everybody knows that's my goal, to have the rematch with Bivol. We'll see what happens but that's my goal, in the same weight class and same place. Everything the same."
Only time will tell whether Alvarez's stubborn want for everything from the same terms of the fight to the same location of T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas will come to fruition for a boxer who, as the sport's biggest star, typically gets what he wants in terms of negotiation. Yet given Alvarez's controversial 2022 comments stating that because he represents Mexico, he doesn't want to fight Mexican fighters anymore, some have argued that's his way of avoiding Benavidez, an aggressive fighter of Mexican and Ecuadorian descent who was born and raised in Phoenix.
Although Alvarez lost by a close margin last May of 115-113 on all three scorecards, Bivol nearly doubled him in total punches landed over 12 rounds in a fight most observers felt should've been a much wider victory for the Russian fighter from Kyrgyzstan. Alvarez held a contractually mandated rematch clause but instead chose bigger money to face the 40-year-old Golovkin in a fight DAZN had coveted since it first signed both fighters in 2018.
Because of that, Bivol came out in April to declare he would only accept the rematch at 168 pounds, a weight he has long said he could make, for a shot at claiming titles in a second division. He also isn't willing to wait around on Alvarez's schedule given his own shot at potentially landing an undisputed light heavyweight title bout later this year against unified champion Artur Beterbiev.
"Bivol already beat [Alvarez], so he's not motivated," Bivol's manager, Vadim Kornilov, told Little Giant Boxing. "One of those terms is Bivol wants to fight him at 168. Bivol wants it to be a fight where there are no more excuses."
Despite the objections, Alvarez doubled down this week on his stance for a 175-pound rematch, mostly because he believes he wouldn't get the credit for beating a potentially compromised Bivol.
"Everyone will start f---ing talking," Alvarez said. "Everything is going to f---ing start saying, 'Oh, but he brought him down [in weight]. That's why [Bivol] lost. But they didn't say anything when I went up [in weight]. But it's the same thing."
Long a ferocious competitor who maintains a fighting schedule much more active than the typical superstar, Alvarez did uncharacteristically admit to entering the Bivol fight without his focus at 100%. It's a thought that was echoed by stablemate, former featherweight champion Oscar Valdez, who saw a much more intense side to Alvarez while preparing for Ryder.
"He was very focused. Losing to Bivol sparked something in him and he's hungry," Valdez told BoxingScene.com. "His main goal this year is to fight Bivol again and beat him. I believe him because I think maybe one of his mistakes was he was doing a lot of things at the same time. He was working out but maybe he was playing gold and he's doing some other things, business, where he wasn't very focused."
How all of the potential distractions, from Bivol to his publicly stated goal of becoming a professional golfer once his boxing career ends, affects Alvarez's focus ahead of the Ryder fight, and such a monumental homecoming, remains to be seen. But for the first time since his fifth-round TKO of Kermit Cintron in Mexico City back in 2011, Mexico's favorite son has come back home.
It wasn't easy to get done and most of boxing will be watching closely to see whether Alvarez can handle his business with the ease in which oddsmakers believe he can. But for Alvarez, it's all part of the job.
"I needed to move a lot of things [to make this fight happen]," Alvarez said. "A lot of things, a lot of big things. I asked [Hearn] the same question you're asking me, 'Why [is it so hard to fight here]?' Now, I know why. It's very difficult. It's very complicated.
"But there's no greater moment than this."
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