Saul “Canelo” Alvarez had no real competition in the ring this weekend on DAZN, demolishing an overmatched Avni Yildirim with his now familiar brand of lethal yet lethargic ennui. The bored look never left his face, even as he smashed winging hooks into the body and used Yildirim’s noggin in an extended target practice. Without breaking a sweat or suffering a single fearful moment, Canelo re-established his claim to the sport’s pound-for-pound throne.
Yilidrim, though no world-beater, had taken Anthony Dirrell to the limit in his previous fight. He’s a competent professional. It’s just that Canelo made him look every bit as hopeless as poor John Moraga, an MMA fighter turned boxer who was ruthlessly run over on the undercard. By the second round Yilidrim was inside a mental cage of his own making, almost scared to throw a single punch for fear of the fire that might be returned.
If not compelling, exactly, it was certainly efficient and impressive.
The aftermath of a shellacking like that didn’t leave much room for the normal boxing discussions about who the champ should fight next or which fighters he might be ducking. Canelo, after all, had already beaten the recognized champion at 168 pounds six days before Christmas and immediately announced a defense against the top remaining challenger in the class (Billie Joe Saunders) for May. Whatever criticisms exist in the fandom, avoiding the tough fights is hardly one that makes sense to direct Canelo’s way.
Instead, perhaps sensing a fighter at the absolute apex of his abilities, fans online began preparing the Mexican for the battles he will fight for decades to come—the theoretical ones against fellow legends of the ring.
It makes sense, then, to begin with the fighter most recently informally inducted into the Pantheon of greats, the ever-present and ever-controversial Floyd Mayweather. The conversation about their relative historical greatness will always be colored by the results in the actual ring. Mayweather, near the end of his run as the sport’s top draw, won a convincing decision over a then 23-year-old Canelo, putting a stamp of reality on the fantasy fights we all book in our minds.
That Canelo, of course, isn’t the one we see today. He’s a much more fluid and economical fighter now, carefully setting up his shots, almost preternaturally aware of what the other man is going to do before he does it. Canelo in 2013 was a fighter on the verge of being something special—the boxer we se today is that vision fully realized, a surefire Hall of Famer willing to both test himself against the best in the world and to fight multiple times every year in an era when actually stepping into the ring feels like a rarity.
It’s not fair to compare Canelo at 30, with so much still to come, with a retired Mayweather who spent 21 years building his own professional legacy. Instead, let’s discuss them both as they were in their 30th year. For Canelo, that’s the present. For Floyd, we’ll step into a time machine and go back to the year 2007, when “Pretty Boy” was becoming “Money.”
In 2007, at the age of 30, Floyd Mayweather was just becoming the fighter who would capture the world's attention with his reality show lifestyle, profligate spending and pro wrestling style heel character. His pay-per-view appearances as an A-side had fallen flat—but his run as the villain opposite De La Hoya and Hatton had made him the kind of star that never really fades.
As an attraction, Canelo is fully formed. Since Mayweather's retirement, he's taken ownership of boxing's top spot, scoring big at the box office and challenging himself against the top fighters in heavier weight classes.
As athletes, the two are well matched. Two key differences shade the discussion towards Mayweather:
Floyd still had some of the biggest fights of his career ahead of him, including significant foes like Juan Manuel Marquez and Miguel Cotto. More importantly, Manny Pacquiao remained his white whale, giving both the fighter and fans something to look forward to.
That kind of competition doesn’t exist for Canelo. Sure, he faces top fighters routinely. There’s no contemporary fighter quite like him in this regard. Perhaps as a result, there is also no one who operates quite on his level to serve as a rival.
It didn’t happen by the time he was 30, but Mayweather’s head-to-head win over Canelo will always make this comparison difficult for Alvarez. No matter what he does going forward, the truth is that the loss will make it harder for historians to consider him the better fighter when the chits are counted and both men’s careers are discussed in the past tense.