SAN DIEGO – The message sent in recent days to all of the fighters waiting for a shot at Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez has been to face each other, and for the sport’s pound-for-pound king to eventually face the winner.

Such a proposal was merely a suggestion. The truth is the only career that Alvarez is concerned about is his own.

“It’s not really that I wish – I really don’t care,” Alvarez told BoxingScene.com of the suggestion that other top fighters in and around the super middleweight division follow his lead regarding competition level. “Sometimes, everyone—even you guys (the media)—keep asking, ‘When are you going to fight everybody? Canelo, Canelo, Canelo.’

“Why don’t they fight each other and I just fight the winner? Simple. But you guys are always asking too much.”

News of Alvarez (57-1-2, 39KOs) putting his undisputed super middleweight championship reign on hold to next challenge WBA light heavyweight titlist Dmitry Bivol (19-0, 11KOs) on May 7 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas has been met with mostly favorable news. There has been a healthy portion of the industry, however, displeased by his decision to go with the two-fight deal offered by Matchroom Boxing and DAZN over a comparable offer from Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) and Showtime.

Alvarez fought six straight times on DAZN, the last three with Matchroom Boxing as the lead promoter whose chairman Eddie Hearn has since formed a strong bond with the Mexican superstar. His last fight came on Showtime Pay-Per-View, where Alvarez stopped Caleb Plant (21-1, 12KOs) in the eleventh round of their November 6 undisputed super middleweight championship clash.

The hope on the PBC/Showtime side was that Alvarez would accept a lucrative two-fight offer to remain put on Showtime PPV and in the super middleweight division. The two fights under such a deal would have come in title defenses versus reigning WBC middleweight titlist Jermall Charlo (32-0, 22KOs)—who would have moved up in weight for a May 7 clash—and a showdown with unbeaten former two-time WBC super middleweight titlist David Benavidez (25-0, 22KOs), which would have been centered around Mexican Independence Day in September.

Instead, Alvarez opted to return to DAZN and resume his longtime bromance with Hearn. The reunion means Bivol on the weekend celebrating Cinco de Mayo and a targeted third fight with IBF middleweight titlist Gennadiy Golovkin (41-1-1, 36KOs), who will move up in weight for a targeted September 17 trilogy match. The latter will require Golovkin to first get past WBA middleweight titlist Ryota Murata (16-2, 13KOs) in their April 9 unification bout on the road in Saitama, Japan.

The current two fight deal in place will give Alvarez a run of nine fights with current or former titlists—three with Golovkin, and one each with Bivol, Plant, Billy Joe Saunders, Callum Smith, Sergey Kovalev and Daniel Jacobs—over his last eleven fights.

Golovkin was the reigning WBC/WBA/IBF titlist in their September 2017 highly disputed draw and WBA/WBC claimant in their September 2018 rematch which Alvarez won by majority decision. Alvarez defended the WBA/WBC titles while claiming the IBF belt after outpointing Jacobs in May 2019, before taking out then-reigning WBO light heavyweight titlist Sergey Kovalev in the eleventh round of their November 2019 clash.

The lone fight during that stretch without a major title at stake was in his December 2018 third-round knockout win of Rocky Fielding, who held a secondary version of the WBA super middleweight title. Alvarez challenged for and won the real WBA “Super” 168-pound in December 2020, along with the vacant WBC super middleweight title after a dominant points win over Smith. Barely ten weeks later came a mandatory title defense versus Avni Yildirim—the second of just two non-titleholders at the time—whom he stopped after three rounds. From there came Alvarez’s eighth-round stoppage of Saunders to unify the WBA/WBC/WBO titles in May, followed by his knockout win over Plant to become the first-ever undisputed super middleweight in the division’s near 40-year history.

For the run he’s enjoyed, Alvarez sticks to his belief that he should be afforded leeway on his year ahead. It comes more so into play when the opposition he has selected remains comparable if not superior to that of his divisional peers calling his name.

“I know I’m the best fighter. I just beat the best fighters in the (super middleweight) division,” notes Alvarez. “I beat everyone at 168. All the champions. Then you still say, ‘you need to fight this guy.’ Why?

“I don’t understand but it’s OK. Right now I can do whatever I want. I do the best things and fight the champions.”

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox