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How quickly Riyadh Season is moving with Canelo Alvarez and boxing is amazing to see
Canelo Alvarez was in New York City’s historic Radio City Music Hall on Thursday for a press conference to formally announce his May 3 fight with William Scull for the undisputed super middleweight world championship, live on DAZN.
But reverberations felt from the previous day’s announcement of Turki Alalshikh and TKO signing a multi-year deal to erect a new boxing promotion with UFC president Dana White and WWE president Nick Khan could not be ignored.
As the arguable face of boxing with a huge year ahead, Alvarez anticipated a sweet science landscape under such a super league in which every weight division only has one champion.
“I don’t mind if they are going to do good for boxing,” Alvarez told DAZN News exclusively. “I don’t mind. If they’re going to take care of the fighters, I don’t mind. And I’m pretty sure they are going to take care of the fighters and that’s what it’s all about.”
It is a pretty significant co-sign from the future lock Hall of Famer to the new promotion.
And Alvarez is not alone.
WBO super lightweight world champion Teofimo Lopez Jr. also lent his support to the new promotion anchored by Alalshikh, White and Khan.
“Yeah, man, I’m on board,” Lopez told DAZN News. “I’m on board for it. I think it’s great for the sport. That’s what we need.
“We need for things to be great,” he continued, simultaneously sliding his ‘Make Boxing Great Again’ hat forward, tilting its brim. “That’s what we’re all about to make boxing great again.”
Lopez will be fighting Arnold Barboza in New York City's Times Square as part of Riyadh Season as well.
A climate where four titles per weight class dissipate to one, Lopez is for that, too.
But standing in the bowels of Radio City Music Hall and speaking with Alvarez and Lopez about this one league being closer to fruition, gave me time to digest how quickly Alalshikh and Riyadh Season are moving and how rapidly the relationship between Canelo and Alalshikh has reached a rolling boil.
During Thursday’s press conference, Alvarez referred to Alalshikh as “Uncle Turki.”
And when Alalshikh himself asked Alvarez, the unified 168-pound champion, about securing Scull’s IBF title in order to haul the missing final jewel of the undisputed super middleweight crown into September’s mega fight with Terence Crawford, Alvarez was gung ho about getting the job done.
“The belt,” the Mexican boxing sensation told Alalshikh, “I got you.”
Alvarez’s May 3 fight against Scull will mark the pound-for-pound superstar’s first fight in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in a career that has spanned world championships across four divisions.
This was a month after Canelo signed a four-fight deal with Riyadh Season, nixing an originally planned May 3 fight against Jake Paul.
“Canelo, in Riyadh in May,” Alalshikh said in a video on his X account last month.
“The biggest fight in the history of boxing in September. Then, two more fights in 2026.
“Don’t mess with the lion.”
The lion roaring into one of the biggest fights in boxing history with a super league to follow in a sport which historically takes eons to pull off such feats is truly something to marvel at.
I know I am marvelling at it all.
Riyadh Season is changing the fight game ... for the better.
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