Canelo’s Game of Duck, Duck, Golden Goose

A writing mentor of mine once told me, “You’re either all the way in or all the way out.”

I’ve followed that advice all throughout my writing life and career. Of course, nobody was ever willing to give me insane money for being half-way in.

Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, however, is raking in the dough for dipping a big, freckled toe into the shark tank before moving over for an ankle-deep stroll through the kiddie pool.

For the last few years, Alvarez has had things relatively easy, taking full advantage of the hand he holds as one of the few bankable draws on the US boxing scene. With a guarantee upwards of $40 million, plus sweetheart bank-end money, nobody is making more for stressing less than the Mexican superstar. And not only is he shoveling stress-free money into his bank account, but he actually has companies competing to hand over that easy money to him.

It’s certainly swell to be Canelo right now.

Personally, at various points in covering Alvarez, I’ve been called both a fanboy and a hater (sometimes much worse). I’ve either been too fawningly supportive or too hyper-critical. But my policy towards all fighters and boxing companies has been consistent– praise someone when they do good things, criticize someone when they do bad. It’s not that hard of a professional philosophy to follow.

Alvarez, once he established himself as a draw, WAS brought up the ranks via red carpet and gifted his first world title on a silver platter. He would later earn some legit boxing street cred by taking difficult stylistic fights that he really didn’t have to, against Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. He stepped up to fight Floyd Maywether in a bout he was not boxing-mature enough to take at the time. He also deserves a good amount of credit for that 2020-2021 run he had, where he fought four times in eleven months and fully unified the super middleweight division.

But if you keep fighting and keep holding world titles while selling yourself as an elite-level pay-per-view fighter, you can only rest for so long on your laurels before playing your hand turns into treating loyal fans as suckers.

And, let’s face it, right now, Canelo is hustling and conning fans like a mothafokah (as he would pronounce it).

With the exception of Gennadiy Golovkin in 2022, who was given just a marginal chance of beating him on reputation merit alone, Alvarez hasn’t fought anyone in his last five bouts who’s been a legit threat. Over those last five fights, he’s been an average betting favorite of just under -1000.

Being a nearly 10-to-1 favorite over your opposition would be excusable if you were THAT good and your available opposition was THAT bad.

And while one could argue that Canelo is THAT good, one CAN’T argue that there aren’t even-money (or close to even-money) fights out there for him. One guy, whose name rhymes with Bavid Denavidez, has been an available and deserving B-side for about three years now.

Canelo, himself, teased of pursuing a rematch with Dmitry Bivol in the days prior to fighting Edgar Berlanga (a tease that gave some indication of his awareness that the Berlanga mismatch was not being well-received at the time). But, despite vows of revenge immediately after his decisive loss to the Russian, he’s never actually pursued that fight in the, at least, two years he had to plot the comeuppance. Some say that Canelo’s recent run of low-risk fights was brought on by the fairly one-sided humbling he got in challenging for Bivol’s light heavyweight title in May of 2022.

But none of this “Canelo’s path of least resistance” stuff seems to matter in the present tense as his live gate sales and pay-per-view buys are still good enough to justify keeping the game going.

Canelo should be able to coast like this until the end of his boxing days. Good for him. But for those entities keeping the hustle monetized and with ambitions beyond four or five events into the future, the smart money is in NOT hustling the fans.