“Pure garbage”
This struggle brings the experts completely out of the socket
Updated on 05.05.2025 – 05:36 a.m.Reading time: 3 min.
Saul Alvarez is showered with money from Saudi Arabia. However, his entertainment value does not increase at first. Experts are really angry about the boxing world champion.
On the one hand, boxing superstar Saul “Canelo” Alvarez was happy. Since Sunday night he has been the sole professional world champion in super middleweight. The 34-year-old Mexican beat the Cuban William Scull in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riad. With this he holds the belts of the four most important boxing associations WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF. The IBF belt announced last autumn due to the unanimous point victory against the previously unbeaten scull.
But “Canelo” cannot be satisfied. Because, according to leading boxing, the fight was a disappointment. And that is still mildly expressed. “What are you doing the hell?” Asked the influential boxing promoter and former world champion Oscar de la Hoya in an apparently spontaneously recorded video on Instagram. “You should offer the fans who have paid a lot of money for a ticket.
De la Hoya apparently sat in his hotel room in the bathrobe in front of the camera and wiped her eyes out of his eyes. He had the urgent need to get rid of his frustration given what he had seen in Riyadh last night. His lack of understanding about Alvarez was particularly great. “Then he also complains that the [Scull] the whole thing is running away. He chose him. If you fight for a rabbit foot, you don’t have to be surprised that it is running away. “
In fact, the challenger from Cuba had done little to even bring Alvarez into difficulties, but SCULL 293 fists, whereas the title bearer only got 152 fists. An underground value, as the statistics were afterwards. Only once in the past 40 years, a fighter had hit fewer fists.
Nevertheless, the judges clearly evaluated the fight for Alvarez, his challenger was too weak and awkward. Box expert Brendan Bradford said afterwards: “118 to 110 victory for Canelo, but we all who had to see this fight have lost.”
The renowned boxing journalist and former ESPN expert Dan Rafael became even clearer: “You should withdraw the license, that was a refusal to work. This struggle was pure garbage. Canelo did not do just as little, even if he clearly won every round. I am properly pissed off.”
After the first fight of his almost 20-year professional career outside of North America, Alvarez confirmed his next title defense for September 12 in Las Vegas against the American Terence Crawford. The fight in Riad meant the continuation of his now traditional title fights around the Mexican national holiday Cinco de Mayo (May 5) for Alvarez, for which 67 professional fights are now available after 67 professional fights.
It was only in February that Alvarez signed a gigantic exclusive contract with the influential Saudi Box-Promoter Turki al-Heik. The paper guarantees him income of over $ 400 million for the next fights. The weak appearance against Scull is said to have already brought him $ 80 million, as the Spanish sports newspaper “Marca” reports.
Alvarez was the first professional world champion in 2023 with three successful title defeats of all four World Cup Gürtels. In the previous year, however, IBF dropped the left-wing boom because Alvarez had preferred a fight against US professional Edgar Berlanga to the mandatory title fight against Scull.