No Canelo-Crawford: Fight Called Off

The mega-fight between superstar Canelo Alvarez and Terence Crawford is reportedly “now off” for September. There’s no word about why it’s off, but it’s possible that the two couldn’t negotiate the deal.

Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) was supposed to move up two divisions from 154 to 168 to challenge WBA, WBC, and WBO super middleweight champion Canelo (62-2-2, 39 KOs) for his belts on September 13th at the 65,000-seat  Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.

The Jake Paul Factor

The Ring broke the news on X about the Canelo-Crawford fight being off. No reasons have been given at this time. Canelo reportedly plans to fight the hugely popular YouTuber Jake Paul in May in a fight that could do crazy numbers, dwarfing what Canelo-Crawford would bring in.

Jake Paul has 20.9 million subscribers on YouTube and 28.8 million Instagram followers. With that many people to market the Canelo-Paul fight, it’s not surprising why Canelo would want to go in that direction over a clash against Crawford, 37, who doesn’t have a huge social following.

Most of the PPV buys from a Canelo-Crawford fight would come from the Mexican, with Crawford just bringing in a trifle. As such, trying to negotiate a fight between them would be a pure nightmare because Crawford sees himself on the level of Canelo, and he’s not.

Canelo can make a lot more money fighting Jake Paul twice and then focus on fighting David Benavidez or Artur Beterbiev. A fight between Canelo and those two popular fighters would bring in a lot more PPV buys than one against Crawford.

Canelo’s Options

Canelo has several better options available to him to make money than fighting Crawford. Moreover, Alvarez wouldn’t receive any credit for beating him because he’s moving up two weight classes. Fans aren’t going to respect that because Crawford has chosen not to move up to 168 to prove himself first by running a mini-gauntlet through these three killers:

1. David Benavidez
2. David Morrell
3. Diego Pacheco

What could be the clincher is that Crawford already made it known that he’s going to follow the Mayweather blueprint by boxing and moving to keep Canelo from landing his shots. That would be such a boring fight, and the Mexican star likely doesn’t want to chase a runner for 12 rounds.