While Canelo Alvarez, the biggest star in boxing today, will likely sit out the rest of the year, he will not be idle. Instead, with Canelo issuing a lawsuit against Oscar De La Hoya/Golden Boy and DAZN, a good deal of the Mexican star’s time is likely to be used up with meetings and court appearances and the like.
Reportedly, Canelo has set about suing his promoter and the streaming network that signed him up back in 2018 – the 11 fight deal earning Canelo a whopping, great $365 million – for, among other things: breach of contract, broken promises, and lost gate revenue.
As fans know, Canelo had not fought since November of last year, when he moved up to light-heavyweight and stopped Sergey Kovalev. Canelo has thus far fought just three of the 11 fights under his DAZN deal. As of now, Canelo has no next fight close to being scheduled.
Canelo issued a full statement:
“I’m the pound for pound number one in the world. I’m not scared of any opponent in the ring, and I’m not going to let failures of my broadcaster or promoters keep me out of the ring. I filed the lawsuit so I can get back to boxing and give my fans the show they deserve.”
Stefan Friedman, a spokesperson for Golden Boy, spoke with ESPN.com, stating how “Canelo’s beef is with DAZN.”
“They’re the ones refusing to honor the contract by not approving the outstanding opponents we have presented to them and by refusing to pay the contractually required amount,” Friedman said.
The folks at DAZN were not happy with some of the names put forward as Canelo opponents, turning these fighters down. Then, DAZN offered to pay Canelo “around half” of his contracted $35 million per fight. The whole pandemic issue has, of course, not helped at all, but now Canelo is claiming his very career has been held up, his earning capacity severely compromised, due to him not getting a fight in almost a full year.
Who knows how this will all end up, with Canelo and DAZN and Golden Boy battling it out in the courts. As far as Canelo’s fans are concerned, this whole big mess simply means they will not get the chance to watch their favorite fighter in action for the foreseeable future.
The lawsuit adds to the awfulness of what has been a helluva bad year all-round.
