It looks like the city, the venue, the weight and more importantly the money has been agreed for a fight between Terence Crawford and Canelo Alvarez.
Obviously, it could collapse in acrimony in the next few hours, but the relentless behind-the-scenes work by Turki Alalshikh, the Saudi Arabian fight fixer, to somehow bring together two of the world’s finest boxers, from different weight classes, in an extraordinary fight that defies traditional boundaries is close to being official. It’s the latest in the modern dream factory of fights.
Alalshikh has been briefing people for about six weeks in private meetings that the fight, which is one of his personal favourites, is getting closer and closer.
His other chosen fight – one he has been talking about for close to a year – is the British showdown at middleweight between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr, and that, according to just about everyone in the sport, has been made for April.
The Canelo and Crawford bout really feels like one of the fantasy fights that boxing fans talked about for decades; it is a fight too good to be true, yet it is going to happen.
Canelo is the fighting idol of Mexico, the sport’s highest-paid boxer, and at just 34 years of age, he has held world titles at four weights across a massive range of 21lb. However, Crawford would have to jump two weights to make the fight a reality at super-middleweight, which would mean that he would in theory be 33lb heavier than he was when he won his first world title.
Crawford has also held world titles at four weights, winning the light-middleweight version at 154lb in August last year; Canelo won a world title at the same weight. In 2011, when Canelo was the new champion at light-middleweight, Crawford weighed nearly 20 pounds less and was boxing six-round fights in total obscurity.
