Canelo Alvarez Vs. Terence Crawford: Why Canelo Looks Disengaged Ahead Of Riyadh Press Conference & Netflix Bout

The kickoff press conference for Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford is happening today, June 20th, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to begin promoting their September 13th event, which will be streamed on Netflix at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.

Canelo’s Disengaged Press Conference

Today’s press conference begins at 2:30 p.m. ET / 11:30 a.m. PT and will be streamed on Netflix’s YouTube channel. Yesterday, Canelo, 35, looked and sounded unmotivated in a short video clip where he spoke of today’s press conference.

Looking at the way Canelo spoke, he appeared mentally disengaged from the process, as if he was going through the motions. It’s impossible to overlook the possibility that the Mexican star isn’t excited about defending his undisputed super middleweight championship against the 37-year-old Crawford.

Crawford: Business Not Sport

It’s understandable why Canelo looks unmotivated. His fight with Crawford is seen as a glorified exhibition and business-level fight due to the weight class differences. It would have helped legitimize the fight in the eyes of the public if Crawford had moved up to 168 and beaten one of the top contenders, like Christian Mbilli. That was a missed opportunity. Turki Alalshikh should have made that a condition for Crawford getting the fight against Canelo.

No-Win for Canelo

The fan perception is that Alvarez is just taking this fight for the gazillions that Turki is paying him. If not for that, he would never fight Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs). It’s a no-win fight for Canelo. If he blows out Crawford, he won’t receive credit. If he loses, it ruins his legacy. All Crawford has to do is be competitive in losing, and he still comes out looking like a hero.

A lot of people believe that Crawford is going to make it an unentertaining fight by moving around to avoid Canelo’s big power shots.

Crawford’s Boring Blueprint?

Terence’s trainer, Brian ‘BoMac’ McIntyre, has already stated that the blueprint they’ll follow is to use the in-and-out style that Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Dmitry Bivol used to defeat Canelo. Those were both boring fights.

There are still 85 days before the September 13th event. So, it’s not surprising that the card hasn’t been announced. Given what Turki Alalshikh said recently about the event being top-heavy, it appears to be focused on the Canelo-Crawford fight.

Underwhelming Fight Undercard

The undercard will be used for prospects and hungry fighters who need to gain attention. In other words, the type of things that all promoters do for events. The undercards are loaded with prospects much of the time.

In this case, it’s arguably being done because if Turki had included an excellent undercard for the September 13th event, it would have detracted from the main event between Canelo and Crawford. As it is, there’s already a lot of disinterest from fans in this match-up.

If a good co-feature fight were included, fans would be focusing on that fight rather than the main event, which they have only a slight amount of interest in due to it being a business-level fight rather than a sporting one.