Why didn't Canelo make the Saunders fight instead of Chavez?

[future hendrixx]

saunders has been keeping that belt hostage for two years now. everybody knows hes a paper champ. a fraud. no different than stevenson. hes selling his chin to ggg for as much $$ as possible. canelo fighting an unknown brit whos a proven duck on cinco de mayo would flop on PPV. chavez brings the last name and genuine bad blood. its more marketable. besides all saunders would do vs canelo is run laps around the ring trying to survive. we all saw how lara got boo'd out the building doing that.

[Eff Pandas]

my idea is that, yes canelo can leverage ggg with his drawing ppv power BUT what I'm saying is that he can have more of an upperhand on ggg if has that belt, then for sure, ggg has no choice to bow down to canelo's demands. ggg wants that last belt, so by canelo taking it, it ****s up ggg's career goal.

MORE of an upperhand lol.

Idk if he needs more of an upperhand. Canelo fights bs opponents & does 2x the PPV numbers & nearly 2x the live gate GGG does vs his best opponents. Plus I'm not sure Canelo has hit his prime yet & there is an argument to be made GGG's seen his best days like most champions in the history of the sport had by age 34.

Time is slipping away is GGG's biggest enemy of all & if he loses to anyone in the meantime this fight is gone. This last title thing is GGG's dream, but I bet Canelo & Oscar couldn't give two f#cks about a title these days. He's the biggest fighter in the game. Manny is all but done, Joshua may or may not get there, but Oscar & Canelo can call their own shot, like they are doing in May & have been doing with Liam, Amir & Kirkland in the recent past, & they know it & are taking full advantage of it.

[boliodogs]

The fight with Chavez should be huge money maker and make more money that a fight with Saunders would make. A promoter often takes these big fights right away because that fight might not be available later on.

[j.razor]

2 reasons:
1. No money in Billy joe. And when he beats Billy he would have to defend against 666 asap & he don't want that yet....
2. He is testing the water in fighting a big man to see if he thinks he can fight 666.

[Hatesrats]

Alvarez is prob tired of beating up British dudes.

[soul_survivor]

he still has it, if im not mistaken. he's still listed as the champ on ring magazine's website.

Oops the wbc I meant. Question still stands lol

[Larry the boss]

Money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Scipio2009]

Cuz had Canelo fought Saunders on Cinco de Mayo, he would've gotten that last belt and could easily extort GGG for the rest of his middleweight career but instead, he chose the money fight with Chavez.

If I was Oscar, that's what I would've done.

Alvarez-Smith sold $5.5m in tickets from AT&T Stadium; Alvarez-Chavez Jr likely did triple that with months to go on the fight (with closed circuit tickets at MGM Grand Ballroom (7k-8k conference venue, it'd seem) going for $75 a pop).

Beyond that, Alvarez can still cashout on the Chavez Jr fight, fight Billy Joe Saunders come December (or September, for a so-so PPV result, if Golovkin continues to price himself out and the Cotto/Chavez Jr rematches or a name fight with Timothy Bradley can't happen) and watch the entire middleweight division simply ignore an of the belts that aren't the WBO one.

On purely starpower, without even bothering with the belt, a 90/10 Alvarez split on the fight is more than fair; add a belt (from where Alvarez could control the entire division) and the split imbalance goes even further in Alvarez's direction.

[KillaCamNZ]

Canelo isn't after status or belts - it's about money.

[Zaryu]

Because GBPs main goal is not to have Canelo fight GGG, in spite of what they say.

They will only fight GGG if they have absolutely no choice, or whenever they feel GGG has slowed down enough for it to make sense.