By Norm Frauenheim
Surprise, surprise, the Canelo Álvarez-Terence Crawford fight was off. Then, faster than flipping a light switch, it was back on. For the nut jobs gathered in the murky bottom of the social-media cesspool, that was the first sign of a lot more off and on. Sure enough, that’s what followed within a few hours Thursday. Canelo-Jake Paul was on, then suddenly off, in a dizzy sequence of dueling reports, all hard to follow in a sport known more for feints than facts.
Welcome to boxing, once called the red-light district of sports. Buyer beware, which these days means don’t believe anything you read or hear because it’s about to change.
It all started late Wednesday with a Canelo-Crawford report from The Ring. Suddenly, a fight rumored for about a year and reportedly a done deal for September was suddenly off. Why? Fill in the blanks.
Immediately after news that — for “now” — the reported Canelo-Crawford fight in September on the Las Vegas Raiders home field is off, there were reports that Canelo would fight Jake Paul, who issued a statement Thursday evening, saying “when there is something to announce, we will announce it.’’
Turns out, there was nothing to announce. Instead, there was boxing’s new money man, Saudi Prince Turki Alalshikh, on social media, saying — somewhat cryptically — that Canelo had a four-fight deal for the Riyadh Season. It’s supposed to start on the first weekend in May, but apparently Paul will not be included, despite multiple reports to the contrary earlier in the day. Meanwhile, The Ring, which Alalshikh recently bought, posted that Canelo-Paul was off. Please, pass the dramamine. It’s hard to know when this messy merry-go-round stops.
Above all, it suggests what everybody already knows. To wit: Boxing doesn’t know what it’s doing. Never has. The difference this week is the chaos. There’s more of that than ever. The best bet — perhaps the only one — is that the chaos will continue, leaving fans and media free to speculate wildly about what to believe and who to mock, what to rip and who to insult.
The best guess in this corner is that an untold amount of money was offered in some furious wheeling-and-dealing between the offs and ons, all in an 11th-hour effort to convince Canelo that he was better off with the Saudis than with a reported bout against Jake Paul.
The Paul reports were credible, mostly because they made sense.
Canelo, the wealthiest boxer on Forbes’ annual list of the world’s richest athletes, has been more businessman than boxer over the last couple of years. He has employed the risk-reward formula he inherited from Floyd Mayweather Jr., who reportedly became a billionaire boxer by adhering to the ratio.
Paul has been calling out Canelo for years. As an aside, he has never called out David Benavidez, who also had been pursuing Canelo for years before his solid victory at light-heavyweight Saturday over David Morrell. Paul fought MMA star Anderson Silva in a boxing match two-plus years ago in Glendale AZ, just a few blocks from Phoenix streets where Benavidez grew up.
“You call out Canelo, why not Benavidez?’’ I asked him at the formal news conference.
“I’m not ready for that,’’ Paul said.
He’s not.
Not then.
Especially not now.
Canelo, super-middleweight champ and still ranked in the middle of most pound-for-pound ratings, knows that, of course. He also knows that Crawford, an all-time welterweight great still among the top three in the pound-for-pound debate and now 1-0 at junior-middle, is a bigger risk than Paul ever could be.
Like Benavidez, Paul has never called out Crawford either.
The risk in either is not worth the reward.
But Paul, whose persona includes an edgy notoriety, has a social-media following that only Gallup can count. His drawing power is also undisputed. A Netflix audience for Paul’s sad spectacle against aging and ailing Mike Tyson on Nov. 15 was reported to peak at 65 million. The live crowd at AT&T Stadium in Arlington TX was announced at 72,300. Factor in all of that and it looked to be a no-brainer.
The only downside would be the criticism Canelo would inevitably hear if he fought Paul, a novice boxer, instead of the emerging Benavidez or the feared Crawford, who is promoted by Alalshikh. But the Saudi offer apparently was big, bigger than even the money Canelo might have made in a May date against Paul.
Apparently, the Saudi deal also restores plans for a Crawford fight against Canelo in September. Crawford tweeted Thursday night that he would wait on Canelo to fight a perceived tuneup in May. Super-middleweight belt-holder William Scull, a Cuban living in Germany, Jermall Charlo and Bruno Surface — who knocked out Jaime Munguia in a huge upset — are possibilities for the May date.
But there’s still a caveat. As of late Thursday, there was still no word — yes or no — from Canelo, the reigning Face of the Game. Only his final say-so can stop the chaos, or maybe just ignite a lot more of it.