Nothing beats a pick-’em fight. Well, nothing except a pick-’em fight featuring two future Hall of Famers who are choosing to take on the greatest challenge in their late-act careers – each other – for free on the world’s biggest and most accessible streaming platform. Boxing fans rarely get so hit-by-a-horsehoe lucky, and anyone trying to steal their joy by nitpicking this fight down to its bones deserves to be promptly sent to timeout by mom and denied internet privileges for the rest of the day.
Is Saturday’s Saul “Canelo” Alvarez-Terence Crawford undisputed super middleweight championship fight at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas perfect? No. What in this life is? Alvarez is 35. Crawford is 37. They have 108 professional fights between them – a lot of water and spilled blood under the bridge. Canelo is slower afoot and in pulling the trigger than he once was, and Crawford – after spending precisely one fight at junior middleweight – is extending himself two more weight classes just to make this matchup happen. Mona Lisa was a 7. John Wick walked with a limp.
I won’t pretend to know exactly what Saturday night’s main event holds in store – push me in a corner and I’ll call it a unanimous decision for Alvarez – but I do believe when we wake up Sunday morning, the boxing universe may look like a very different place. I also think there happens to be a “best” outcome for the health of the sport. So let’s get into it:
If Canelo Alvarez wins
A four-division champion and boxing’s first and only undisputed super middleweight champ, Alvarez has stood the test of time, going 63-2-2 (39 KOs) since turning pro in 2005 as a 15-year-old. He has pushed himself at times: Canelo tangled with Shane Mosley – shopworn, but a future Hall of Famer nonetheless – at age 22. He tangled with, and lost to, peak Floyd Mayweather Jnr before he himself had entered his prime. He messed with the bull in Erislandy Lara, escaping with a split decision win. He bolstered boxing’s cherished Mexico-Puerto Rico rivalry in a fight with Miguel Cotto, then, blessedly, exiled the Son of the Legend to the sport’s outer reaches in a torch-passing of sorts with Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr. All of this came before an epic trilogy with the brilliant Gennady Golovkin – in which Canelo went 2-0-1.
Of course, detractors will point out that Alvarez’s record in that series just as easily could (and perhaps should) have been flipped. They will point to his favored status as a longtime “A-side” and grumble about the breaks he has caught from judges, sanctioning bodies, commissions and others. Most damningly, Alvarez in recent years has used that leverage to the hilt, daring only to be indisputably decent. He has settled, equivocated and cherry-picked his opposition. So did Mayweather – but just as Floyd’s career legacy has suffered among aficionados, so too will Canelo’s.
Even a win over Crawford won’t fully rewrite that narrative. An undisputed super middleweight defense against a 37-year-old pumped-up welterweight? Hagler-Hearns this isn’t. But adding the name of another shoo-in Hall of Famer to his trophy case – one who many considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world only a year ago – has value for Canelo, both now and in the years ahead. A win over another great of his generation, in one of the most widely viewed spectacles in boxing history, burnishes his legend while also maintaining his status as the sport’s cash cow and leading man.
Depending on the damage done, a defeat for Crawford could mean the end of the line. Certainly it would decisively extinguish whatever glimmer remains of his prime. It would throw open the doors across as many as three divisions for a series of unfamiliars and hopefuls to introduce themselves as viable contenders, champions and attractions. And, for what it’s worth, it would render any P4P debate to a then-there-were-two comparison between Oleksandr Usyk and Naoya Inoue.
If Terence Crawford wins
As “what ifs” go, this one is a much bigger deal than the occasion of an Alvarez win. Crawford, 41-0 (31 KOs), is a boxing hydra – the sort of fighter who can rain fire on his opponents from all angles, sometimes seemingly at once. He is a gifted athlete, a skilled craftsman, a diabolical tactician and a dawg of the highest order. And still “Bud” is very much up against it in this fight.
As a natural welterweight, Crawford lacks the artillery to stop Canelo, whose all-timer of a chin held up at light heavyweight and against big hitters (flawed as they may be) such as Edgar Berlanga and Jaime Munguia – to say nothing of Golovkin. The assignment for Crawford: outbox Alvarez, but also inflict irrefutable damage over 12 rounds to sway potentially partisan judges, all while avoiding what’s coming back at him. Even Canelo deniers must admit that this is a Herculean task. But what if Bud is up for it?
A win for Crawford throws the boxing world off its axis. An easygoing Omaha family man becomes a household name overnight, and the decade-plus gravitational pull of a sport’s supernova is broken. A bad beat for Canelo? Sure. But his career will soldier on, assuming he wants it to. Because Alvarez is a proud man who likes horses and expensive cars, one can expect him to at least assemble a farewell tour of bankable, beatable foes. The Canelo Show – if under a smaller, somewhat more dilapidated tent – will go on.
What it means for Crawford, the P4P debate and the rest of boxing is a multiverse of possibilities. Most importantly, it instantly creates another shining constellation on the mainstream sports skyline, adding a name to the short list of must-see boxing phenomena – Canelo, Usyk, Inoue and Tyson Fury – and helping maximize the blockbuster matchmaking potential and vibrancy of a sport that ain’t dead yet.
Which outcome is best for boxing?
For at least the past 40 years, boxing has remained only as healthy as its biggest star. Almost without skipping a beat, the pulse of the sport could be measured at any time based on the comings and goings of Mike Tyson, George Foreman and Roy Jones Jnr through Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather and Fury. Hours from Saturday’s fight, Alavrez still holds the current mantle. Will boxing’s center hold if Canelo comes undone against Crawford?
Inflection points can be found in every boxing era – but often not until well after the fact. Fury retired for two and a half years after becoming undisputed heavyweight champion – then returned to expand his legend. Mayweather-Pacquiao fizzled. Jones got starched and fought another 14 years. Foreman went out tired and bruised, then became bigger than ever hawking grills. Tyson was on the wrong end of boxing’s grandest upset, yet he has somehow endured as a beacon of the sport.
A Canelo win changes little. Perhaps a defeated Crawford shuffles off into retirement – a net loss for boxing – but his marketability (and therefore his ability to buoy opponents in big fights) would remain roughly static. The critics and sycophants who surround Alvarez will view the triumph through their own lenses – a stalemate of public perception. Is Canelo then emboldened to take on the division’s young bucks, or even bigger challenges? Bektemir Melikuziev? Hamzah Sheeraz? David Benavidez? Let’s be honest: probably not.
But a Crawford win? That stirs the pot. It gets fans (even casuals) talking. Any buzz, any focus drawn by the fights themselves – not social media beefs, not alphabet shenanigans, not promotional gobbledygook – is spun gold for boxing. Neither Canelo nor Crawford is at the top of his game, and each figures to be knocked down another peg by the other. That’s hardly the point. Both fighters are at the “How to Win Friends and Influence People” stages of their careers. The math is simple: If a couple of quality individual performances Saturday in Las Vegas add up to a Crawford upset, the sum total for boxing is a seismic, dialogue-driving event and two superstars – rather than just one – with exalted, influential places in boxing’s current firmament.
Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, was a contributor to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be found at LinkedIn and followed on X and Bluesky.
