Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez agreed it was lengthy overdue to return to his roots.
The undisputed tremendous middleweight champion remained agency on his subsequent struggle happening in his homeland, regardless of presents from world wide for his in-ring providers. Places in the UK and the Center East have been speculated for Alvarez’s long-discussed necessary title protection versus interim WBO titlist John Ryder (32-5, 18KOs).
Finally, it was determined that the Might 6 occasion will land at Estadio Akron, a 48,000-plus seat multi-purpose stadium simply exterior of the boxer’s hometown of Guadalajara, Mexico.
“It’s an unbelievable second for me,” Alvarez famous throughout a press convention held Thursday afternoon at Petco Park, house to Main League Baseball’s San Diego Padres. “I (will) get to see my grandmother, my dad, mother, my brothers, my household there. A variety of media guys I noticed once I began in boxing.
“I really feel very proud. I really feel completely happy to convey this struggle to Guadalajara. I can provide the folks among the experiences I had in different places as the very best on this planet. That is the proper time. A very long time in the past, I needed to struggle in Guadalajara. That is the proper second to convey this struggle to Guadalajara.
The struggle will mark Alvarez’s first in his house nation since November 2011, when he scored a sixth-round knockout of former welterweight titlist Kermit Cintron in Mexico Metropolis. Alvarez (58-2-2, 39KOs) has since fought 22 instances within the U.S. and has emerged as the game’s largest star within the post-Floyd Mayweather period.
Alvarez’ drawing energy was already on the rise by the point he confronted and misplaced to Mayweather of their September 2013 tremendous struggle. The occasion established the reside gate document for a boxing occasion in Nevada, since surpassed by Mayweather’s wins over Manny Pacquiao and Conor McGregor and Alvarez’s first two fights with Gennadiy Golovkin.
Alvarez has additionally produced well-received—and attended—occasions in Houston, Miami, San Antonio, the higher Dallas space and his lengthy awaited December 2018 New York Metropolis debut.
Two separate journeys to Texas in a span of three fights noticed Alvarez unify the WBA, WBC and WBO tremendous middleweight titles in wins over then-unbeaten titlists Callum Smith and Billy Joe Saunders. Alvarez turned the primary undisputed tremendous middleweight champion within the division’s 40-plus 12 months historical past only one struggle later with an eleventh-round knockout of unbeaten IBF titlist Caleb Plant atop their November 2021 Showtime Pay-Per-View in entrance of a sold-out crowd at MGM Grand Backyard Enviornment in Las Vegas.
The win over Saunders produced a reside gate of $9,002,920 from 66,065 tickets bought at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The paid attendance whole set a document for the biggest indoor crowd for a boxing occasion in North America, surpassing the 63,352 followers readily available for the September 1978 Muhammad Ali-Leon Spinks heavyweight championship rematch on the Louisiana Superdome (now Mercedes-Benz Superdome) in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Nonetheless, the sensation is that his lengthy overdue homecoming will change some other boxing reminiscence because the one which he’ll most cherish.
“It is going to be among the finest moments of my profession for certain,” vowed Alvarez. “The struggle with Billy Joe Saunders in Dallas was superb. It was one of the crucial [enjoyable] fights I’ve ever been in.
“I believe Guadalajara goes to be the identical or much more.”
Jake Donovan is a senior author for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox