Canelo Alvarez will be attending a press conference tomorrow with William Scull in New York City to promote their May 3rd fight in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The two super middleweight champions will have their first face-off at the Radio City Music Hall. The press conference begins at 6:00 p.m. ET.
WBA, WBC and WBO champion Canelo (62-2-2, 39 KOs) and IBF champ Scull (23-0,9 KOs) are headlining for their undisputed super middleweight championship to determine who the king of the division is. However, this fight is more of a handing over of the belt type situation with Canelo winning back his IBF title that he sacrificed recently.
Riyadh Build-up
Scull won his IBF belt in a close, controversial 12 round decision over Vladimir Shishkin on October 19th in Germany. A lot of fans thought Scull lost.
Fans on social media have been pretty negative about this fight, saying Canelo is cherry picking, playing it safe against Scull rather than fighting someone with talent like David Benavidez. As the Canelo-Scull fight gets closer, we’ll see whether fans will become more excited about this matchup as it draws nearer.
Canelo needs the IBF belt that Scull holds for him to become undisputed against. He’ll be able to go into his September 13th title defense against Terence Crawford with a pawn that adds value to their clash. Crawford says he’s moving up to 168 to face Canelo for his legacy and to become a three-division undisputed champion. That makes it important for Canelo to win the IBF belt from Scull.
Most fans see it as superficial for Canelo to have all four belts in his possession for the Crawford. He doesn’t need that to validate the match to the public. It’s not like Crawford deserves the fight and plans to say at super middleweight afterwards.
