Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford will battle at the huge Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas in their still-to-be-announced fight in September. This is a Riyadh Season event, and it could sell out at the Stadium.
Crawford’s last fight against Israil Madrimov on August 3rd sold 17,999 tickets for the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles. This suggests that it’s not s given that Canelo-Crawford will sell out the 65,000 Allegiant Stadium, but that probably doesn’t matter to Turki Al-Sheikh because he’s got money to burn.
The Ring broke the news of Canelo vs. Crawford being staged at Allegiant Stadium, which is the “first-ever boxing card” at the venue. We don’t know who will be on the undercard yet, but it could be stacked with great fights if it’s anything like the February 22nd Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol 2 card.
Canelo is rumored to be receiving a giant payday for this fight, and you got to believe that Crawford will be paid an enormous sum as well. This would likely be his career-high payday coming near the end of a long unbeaten run in the sport that started in 2008.
Too Old, Too Light?
Crawford has never fought at 168 and will be coming off a year layoff when he faces Canelo. That might not matter to him because he’s going to be paid so well, but if he’s hoping to win, his chances are slim. He’s moving up 14 lbs from 154 to 168 after a below-average performance in his debut at junior middleweight against Israil Madrimov on August 3rd.
A year of layoff is going to be hard enough for the 37-year-old Crawford, but when you couple that with his age, never having fought at 168, and unimpressive performance against Madrimov, it doesn’t look good for him.
However, if Crawford just shows up and is competitive in losing, he’ll get his participation trophy and will be applauded by fans the same way they did with Edgar Berlanga. He just picked up a $10 million payday in losing to Canelo, but his stock didn’t drop because he was competitive.
