There is little question that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez-Terence Crawford will prove the biggest fight of 2025.
To that end, their fight, on September 13 at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, has already been subject to a multi-city press tour across Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, New York, and Vegas.
In the instant-gratification-and-short-term-memory climate of 2025 it can be particularly difficult for fighters’ attitudes towards each other to evolve in the space of little over a week, as the press tour Alvarez and Crawford were taken on perhaps demanded.
Both are also disciplined professionals more focused on preparing physically than on attempting to get under each other’s skin.
To that end, BoxingScene has revisited what unfolded between them before they returned to their respective training camps ahead of a potentially-defining fight.
– In Riyadh, both – as they are obliged to do – asserted that their latest victory will follow. Crawford also defended his unfairly criticised victory over Israil Madrimov in August 2024 – “I’m cool with my performance,” he said, and he will have meant it – and Alvarez, less convincingly, blamed William Scull for the significant criticism that inevitably followed his unconvincing victory over the Cuban in May.
– Also in Riyadh, Turki Alalshikh, given so little reward for bringing Alvarez-Scull to Riyadh, had, by then, been critical of “Tom and Jerry” fights and predicted significantly more entertainment on September 13. He also revealed his plans to reward the winner with an additional $5m if they recorded a knockout. Both fighters’ demeanors and previous performances regardless suggests that, like Scull – incidentally also in Riyadh – they will fight as they see fit.
– “However I got to fight, I’m going to win,” Crawford also said in the Saudi Arabian capital. “I’m not going to let someone else tell me how to fight when I’ve been doing that my whole life. I won’t be running. I can tell you that.”
“He’s not going to beat me,” Alvarez said. “Don’t worry about it. I’m a winner.”
– Their encounter two days later at Fanatics Fest in New York – Fanatics Fest drew an estimated 100,000 to the Javits Centre – was considerably more cliched. Alvarez – who when truly angry once punched Caleb Plant – lightly shoved the 37-year-old Crawford. Crawford taunted, with a crybaby gesture, Alvarez’s fans.
“Once it get close to that time, it’s time to go to work,” Crawford said of fight night. “When we go to work, y’all know what comes after that.”
“You hear that?” Alvarez, 34, added. “We are professionals and when we step in the ring, it’s gonna be different.”
– Five days later in Vegas, Alvarez had the opportunity to explain that same shove. “He tried to walk me back and [that] just was my reaction,” he said.
“And I think he [didn’t do] it because he really wanted to do [it]. I think Turki Alalshikh told him, ‘You need to do something’.”
“Turki didn’t ask me to do nothing,” Crawford said. “I didn’t touch him. Listen, first and foremost, somebody was in the room saying that I was scared of him. So, I stepped to him and showed him who was the boss of this fight. I ain’t scared.”
– Also in Vegas, Alvarez revealed that his victory in his second fight with Golovkin in 2014 was his most memorable. Crawford said that his over Ricky Burns in 2013 was his.
