Canelo’s Scull Maneuver: Inflating Crawford’s Value

Ade Oladipo favors Canelo Alvarez fighting William Scull next on May 3rd to give fans something to look forward to by going to Terence Crawford next in September. It’s a way of artificially making the Canelo-Crawford seem bigger. Fighting Scull ensures that whatever comes next for Canelo is huge, even if it really isn’t.

Artificial Elevation

If Canelo were to fight Jake Paul on May 3rd and be seen by 50 million viewers, it would be a massive drop-off for the Mexican star to face Crawford in September. Far fewer fans would see that fight, and the hype generated would be minimal because Crawford is poor at promoting his events.

Canelo would have been better off permanently forgetting about Scull and focusing on the Jake Paul fight in May so that many more fans would see it. If Crawford seems small in comparison afterward, that’s what happens when you fight guys who aren’t popular. It would happen if Canelo fought any other unpopular fighter. You can’t try to make the fight seem bigger than it is by fighting someone even less well-known.

The real problem is that Canelo vs. Crawford isn’t “the big fight” that Turki Al-Sheikh thinks it is. Although he is a fan of Crawford, casuals worldwide aren’t into watching him fight because he’s been a pure boxer his entire career and not an exciting slugger. The one fight where Crawford looked like a slugger was against Errol Spence, who looked like a zombie in that contest after a long layoff and massive weight loss.

Packaging Crawford

“I think it makes it bigger in terms of Canelo. If you fight Jake Paul, the Crawford fight is smaller in terms of eyeballs,” said Ade Oladipo to Ariel X Ade on DAZN Boxing YouTube channel, talking about if Canelo Alvarez had fought Jake Paul on May 3rd, it would have been bigger than the Terence Crawford fight on September 13th.

“I like the idea of building up [rather than building down] to Crawford. If you fight Scull, it’s smaller. You beat Scull, become undisputed, and now there’s the chance of history being made of Crawford trying to be the first three-weight undisputed champion.

“I don’t mind the undisputed fight [Canelo vs. Scull], and then you go to Crawford. Then Crawford has a chance to become undisputed. I like that story as opposed to Jake Paul. Yes, I have more eyeballs than Jake Paul and Crawford. I almost feel that Jake Paul overshadows Crawford a bit, and that’s what I don’t like.”

That sounds like a wrong-headed view to have, trying to artificially make the Canelo-Crawford fight seem bigger by having Canelo take the no-name IBF paper champion William Scull rather than the much bigger fight against Jake Paul on May 3rd.

If Crawford isn’t a big enough fight on its own due to the Nebraska native’s lack of popularity with casual boxing fans, you can’t prop it up by taking a terrible fight against Scull. It would have been better for Canelo to take the fight with Jake, be seen by 50 million fans on Netflix and 20+ on Paul’s Instagram followers and YouTube subscribers.

If Crawford lacks the popularity to measure up, that’s his problem, but it’s stupid to take the albatross to fight against Scull just to make the circus match against Terence look big in comparison.

The Illusion of Demand

“With William Scull, we’re all waiting for it to be Crawford,” said Ade. “The issue is, Jake Paul will then go, ‘My fight is bigger.’ We’re building this as boxing fans that Canelo-Crawford is the biggest thing of 2025. Jake Paul will say, ‘You beat me, but we had the biggest fight of 2025. You vs. Crawford, Canelo, is the third biggest or the second biggest. I had the biggest fight.’

“I think boxing fans don’t want that. We want to say Canelo-Crawford is the biggest thing. All of a sudden, it’ll be Jake Paul vs. Canelo is the biggest thing. He [Jake] will troll for ages.”

Boxing fans want to see the most entertaining fights, and Canelo vs. Scull ain’t it. That’s a poor fight. If you saw Scull’s last fight against Vladimir Shishikin, you’ll know that this guy doesn’t rate being on PPV. He’s a big step down from Canelo’s last two poor opponents, Edgar Berlanga and Jaime Munguia.