Who is next for Canelo?

[TitoFan]

when i talk about canelo's level, i am referring to his crossover star appeal, one of the guys in the sport that even casuals know & brings in the big money. i consider aj on that level currently & maybe naoya in japan for the little guys. some of the hate these guys get is warranted, some is unnecessary. look at the hate aj gets at times. some brought on, other times just unnecessary hate. there are those that hat on naoya & will say stuff like tank would kayo him, just to hate on him. i am a canelo fan but have stated recently that i am becoming frustrated but i can acknowledge that he has taken risks in his career & fought some of the best of his time. did all the fights happen when they should have? of course not. but canelo is not alone in this. did he take money fights instead of the best challenges at times? sure he did but again he is not alone in this. i agree that there are much better fighters than canelo in the past, look at someone like finito lopez, he's virtually unknown. guys like muhammad ali were hated at times, mike tyson went through his share, oscar de la hoya still gets his share. some of it is warranted & brought on themselves, other times it's just unnecessary hate. fighting floyd was a huge risk for canelo & there's nothing wrong with losing to a great fighter. sure canelo took his time to fight ggg & took a money fight with jr but he fought ggg before any of these other middleweights did, felix sturm, sergio martinez, miguel cotto. building or marinating a fight is nothing new, there are countless fights we missed out on long before canelo v ggg because of this. & yes he fought ggg again in an immediate rematch after many thought he lost the first fight, another big risk. dmitry was again another risk. i also want to see the david b fight because i think he's earned it by fighting the best opposition but he only won the interim belt against david lemieux after losing his belt twice outside the ring due to his own mistakes. david morrell won his belt nearly a year before that & william scull was made the ibf mandatory two months after david b won his interim belt. so all these guys are in the same boat but all we hear about is david b is being ducked. i just don't understand david b moving up. i think david b v david m is the best fight in the division & want to see it. david b's manager claimed there was a signed agreement but now they don't want to pursue the fight. christian mbilli is number one in the wbc behind canelo & david b. there are good fights for david b to take at super middleweight but he's choosing to move up against a guy that was beaten into a three year retirement. maybe there's some behind the scenes stuff going on where david b might be offered canelo in september if he takes on canelo's fighter, i don't know. as i've said before i am becoming frustrated but it's not only canelo who's doing it, look how long we've waited for tyson v oleksandr, artur v dmitry, bud v errol before that, floyd v manny. if canelo doesn't fight david b or david m this year then i'll definitely be criticizing him loudly

When you refer to crossover stars who even casuals know, and bring in the big money... I suppose AJ could be included in that group. But IMO not Inoue. Casuals don't even acknowledge the little guys. The fact that Inoue has the recognition that he does is a testament of just how incredible he is... and how very much higher he should be on anybody's p4p listings than Canelo Alvarez. Inoue has basically FORCED people to take notice.

The AJ hate? Some of it may come from his failure to secure a fight against Wilder (whether his fault or not). Some of it may come from his strange behavior in the wake of his first loss to Usyk. Who knows. I've liked him ever since he ended the boring Wlad reign. As for Inoue, I've never seen or heard any hate toward him. What reason could there be? That he only fights in Japan? That may be true of many a great Japanese fighter, but not Naoya.

We'll never agree on Canelo obviously, because you're a fan and I'm a hater. But let's look at a couple of Canelo's calculated moves.

Rocky Fielding.

Sure. Plenty of fighters have gone up a weight division to challenge for a new title. But Canelo's move was totally calculated, against one of the weakest champions he could've ever picked out. Compare that against a Sugar Ray Leonard, who went up to middleweight to challenge Marvin Hagler in 1987. Michael Spinks, who challenged Larry Holmes at heavyweight in 1985. Trinidad, when he went up to middleweight to fight Joppy. All these guys went up against formidable opposition at the new weights... and stayed there. Canelo grabbed the shiny trinket from a weak zebra... and went quickly scurrying back to middleweight. Really?

Sergey Kovalev

Another brief jump just to grab a belt and go scurrying back down before having to face anyone else. Kovalev was already a two-time knockout loser, having been exposed as a bully with a weak underbelly by that formidable of punchers... Andre Ward . Canelo saw his window of opportunity, and went for it. Did he stay at 175? Of course not. He took advantage of a man who later has said publicly that conditions were such that his winning was "impossible"... and many observers accused of taking a dive. Canelo wasn't chasing greatness. He was chasing a low-hanging fruit at another weight.

168 is Canelo's natural weight at this point. But he thought nothing of trying to drag 39-year old Badou Jack down to 180 (from 200 pounds) to fight for the (cough) cruiserweight title. Ginger gets more shameless with age.

Finally... he fights a dude from two weight classes down (not the 1st time, mind you) rather than acknowledge the guy in his own division that even Canelo's own family is probably secretly begging Canelo to fight, lest his legacy suffers.

I'll be one saying good riddance when Canelo finally hangs up his gloves.

[TIC]

to be fair i did say maybe naoya, mainly because of the money he brings for his opponents. aoya did an interview with the ring recently where he said some things about american fighters. as you can imagine some didn't take it well. race can be another reason for hate, jealousy could be another reason. you can pick through any top fighters record & find soft touches, this is nothing new. i think the sergey win was pretty good, did canelo have his advantages? sure but again nothing new. canelo's run through super middle to become undisputed was impressive. many fighters have brought guys up from lower divisions, again nothing new. just to give the fights you highlighted a bit of context. the rocky fight was sandwiched between the back to back ggg fights & danny jacobs. rocky also held a belt in the division above, which helped lead to the callum fight. the sergey fight was sandwiched between danny & callum a unified belt holder. sergey was also a belt holder in a division two weights above where canelo had fought last. the jermell fight was the first of his new pbc contract & was supposed to be jermall. jermell was also an undisputed champion