Canelo Alvarez Fires Back at Turki Alalshikh Over Crawford Fight Offer

A potential fight between Terence Crawford and Saul ‘Canelo‘ Alvarez no longer has its big-money backer.

Crawford has called for the fight since his undisputed win over Errol Spence Jr last year. This past weekend he moved up to 154 and dethroned champion Israil Madrimov and much of the pre and post-fight talk was centred around Canelo.

Despite previously being dismissive of the fight by saying he would get little credit for beating the much smaller man, the Mexican super-middleweight champion did concede that he would take it if the money was right.

READ: Canelo Alvarez Brand Terence Crawford Fight “Easy Money”, Admits David Benavidez “Is a Risk

With progress seemingly made, Riyadh Season’s Turki Alalshikh said during the Crawford-Madrimov card that he had made an official offer. Just over two days later, he performed a u-turn on social media.

“Just wrapped up an important meeting now with my team, planning for the upcoming fights that we will make for 2024-2025. I decided to disregard the Canelo fight, as I don’t want it anymore. Instead, I will be focusing for the US market with bigger fights, especially for the legend Crawford.”

Canelo is diligently focused on facing undefeated Puerto Rican Edgar Berlanga next and he believes that to be the sticking point for Alalshikh.

Speaking to FightHype, the 34-year-old revealed that he was contacted for a meeting but turned it down due to his upcoming defence. He then said that, since he wasn’t the one seeking the fight out, he ‘didn’t care’ about the recent turn of events.

“I don’t really care about it. Look, I’m focused 100% on my fight and I don’t really care about it. They text me yesterday, is it possible to talk about that Crawford fight for February or meet yesterday here in Los Angeles with him. And I said look, I’m 100% focused on this fight and I can’t talk about other fights.

Maybe that’s why he thought about that today, because I say I’m not ready to talk about other fights. And I don’t really ask him for anything. I’m good … I’m good with what I’m doing. I don’t need that kind of thing. I’m not looking for that kind of fight. If they want the fight, okay, it’s my way not their way.”

Canelo defends three of the four major super-middleweight belts against Berlanga on September 14 having recently been stripped of the IBF title.