Saul “Canelo” Alvarez embarrassed and outclassed Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. for 12 rounds Saturday night in Las Vegas, landing pristine combinations at will and walking away virtually untouched. The fight received a glut of hype from boxing fans since Canelo and Chavez are the two biggest names in Mexican boxing. The action in the ring, however, underwhelmed as Chavez didn’t put up much of a fight.
Fans might have been left with a bad taste in their mouths were it not for the declaration that Canelo’s next contest will officially be a highly anticipated superfight with Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin, known simply as “GGG.”
The Canelo-GGG announcement was the best way to cleanse the palate after 12 one-sided rounds, but it also impacted another potential superfight that’s in the works because of its Sept. 16 fight date.
UFC president Dana White, a lifelong boxing fan, was in attendance for the fight and spoke briefly to media at the T-Mobile Arena after the event.
Naturally, he was asked about the ongoing negotiations between UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor and boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr., both of whom are planning to box one another later this year.
“We just lost our date to Canelo and GGG, but good, that’s a good fight. I’ll be at that one too,” White said of the Sept. 16 bout.
After months and months of denying Mayweather-McGregor would ever materialize, White conceded following UFC 210 in April that he now supports the idea and expects it to happen.
Both sides clearly want it yet there are still many details, financial and otherwise, that need to be settled.
“Floyd wants this fight and we want to try and make it, so we’ll see what happens,” White said. “Listen, Floyd is one of the best ever in the history of the game and Conor is one of the best ever in the history of our game, so people want to see it and I’m always into making fights that people want to see.”
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McGregor is understandably a massive underdog according to early betting lines but White won’t count out the Irish superstar.
“Anything’s possible when two guys get in and start throwing punches, especially when a guy hits as hard as Conor does, you know? That’s what makes it fun,” White added. “If everybody really believed that it would be that one-sided, nobody would really want to see it. That’s the fun of doing a fight like this.”
For the time being, while many combat sports fans wait for what would undoubtedly be a captivating spectacle in Mayweather-McGregor, all combat sports fans can look forward to a bona fide superfight in Canelo-GGG.
