It seems boxing’s tendency for shooting itself in the foot knows no bounds. With significant action sparse due to the continuing rampage of the Covid-19 Pandemic, it appears the imminent Canelo Alvarez-Billy Joe Saunders and Josh Taylor-Jose Ramirez unification fights will both take place on May 8.
Last week, ESPN’s Mark Kriegel revealed that the 140lbs quadruple title collision between WBA ‘Super’ and IBF king Taylor and WBC and WBO title holder Ramirez would fall on the May date in Las Vegas.
Canelo, of course, traditionally fights on the popular Cinco De Mayo weekend, but this year the Mexican celebration falls midweek on the Wednesday so either a May 1 or May 8 date was possible.
But late on Tuesday evening, The Athletic’s Mike Coppinger said sources had told him that the super-middleweight unification would also hit the latter date in a seemingly unnecessary scheduling clash, with the earlier Saturday still available and no major boxing event planned.
“Absolute disaster for boxing to have two fights of that magnitude head-to-head,” tweeted Coppinger.
Canelo’s current promoter Eddie Hearn later confirmed the May 8 date for the Saunders fight to ‘The Ak and Barak Show’ on Sirius XM and DAZN.com with venues in Texas and Florida in the running. A date clash would, of course, give boxing fans the unenviable choice of which event to watch live and unnecessarily share the spotlight on fight week.
First, Canelo must defeat WBC mandatory challenger Avni Yildirim at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami on February 27 though few observers expect him to have much trouble with the Turkish outsider.