By Miguel Rivera
According to several reports in Mexico, Saul "Canelo" Alvarez has rejected the World Boxing Council's title belt which the sanctioning body created for the big Cinco De Mayo event.
The WBC created the belt, which it planned to present to the winner of Canelo's HBO Pay-Per-View fight with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
There is no world title at stake, because the contest is taking place at a catch-weight of 164.5-pounds. Canelo is still the holder of the WBO's junior middleweight title and is moving up in weight to take the fight, but afterwards he plans to compete in the middleweight division.
The rift between Canelo and WBC began last year, when Canelo held their middleweight title.
The WBC applied pressure on Canelo to defend their against the mandatory challenger, Gennady "GGG" Golovkin.
In response, Canelo dropped the WBC belt and had some harsh words for the sanctioning body - stating that he wasn't going to allow the sanctioning body to force the direction of his career. The WBC made Golovkin, who held the interim-belt, their full champion.
Canelo went down to the junior middleweight division, where he was embraced the World Boxing Organization (WBO), who don't have the best relationship with the WBC. Canelo fought for their junior middleweight title last September and captured it with a knockout of Liam Smith.
During the pre-fight promotion, Chavez Jr. lashed out at Canelo over the rift with the WBC. Chavez Jr. called Canelo "an ingrate" for turning his back on the WBC and said the sanctioning body assisted the once-beaten boxer with winning his first world title, which took place at a catch-weight of 150-pounds against Matthew Hatton.
Some of the reports indicate that Canelo even ordered for the WBC's belt to be removed from the event's official program.