'That's the only fight I want': How Terence Crawford landed Canelo Alvarez

LAS VEGAS -- Shortly aft moving up successful value and eking retired a win successful the closest combat of his career, Terence Crawford -- past connected the cusp of his 37th day -- was insisting connected jumping another 2 divisions to combat the undisputed 168-pound champion, Canelo Alvarez. This was 13 months ago. Crawford was addressing an assemblage of one: his patron, the Saudi Arabian boxing financier, Turki Alalshikh.

Even by boxing standards -- I usage the word advisedly, arsenic boxing has lone fewer and dubious standards -- it seemed a semi-preposterous idea. Alalshikh changeable him a look. "But the weight?" helium said.

Actually, it was much than conscionable the weight. Both past and communal consciousness favour not simply the people bigger man, but the younger one, and the alleged "A side." Paired with Canelo -- boxing's starring man, who had already generated astir fractional a billion dollars successful purses -- Crawford was nary of those things. What's more, helium would bash it without insisting connected immoderate of the accustomed contractual niceties designed to adjacent the odds: nary catchweight, nary rehydration clause.

Alalshikh projected a mates of precise lucrative, if much sensible, alternatives: Vergil Ortiz Jr. oregon Jaron "Boots" Ennis, each of them undefeated young stars with large ambition astatine 154 pounds. Crawford refused to entertain either option. "Boots is not a megafight," helium said. "Vergil Ortiz is not a megafight. This is the process extremity of my career. They're going to say, 'You were expected to win.' I privation Canelo Alvarez."

He wanted the combat helium wasn't expected to win.

"OK," said Alalshikh, relenting. "I'm going to effort to get that combat for you."

"That's the only combat I want," said Crawford.

Thirteen months hence, Canelo and Crawford volition combat Saturday astatine Allegiant Stadium. Canelo agreed to the combat successful instrumentality for a purse believed to beryllium successful excess of $100 cardinal ("More than that," Alalshikh proclaimed astatine Thursday's quality conference) -- an connection that adjacent the sport's starring antheral couldn't refuse. But it each began with Crawford. "That's however we got here," helium says.

A procreation of fighters has travel to look upon Canelo little arsenic a rival than arsenic a score, a jackpot, a vocation payday. Their victories, it seems, were signing the contracts, not warring the fights. But Crawford looks to Canelo arsenic his achromatic whale, thing helium was stalking agelong earlier that gathering with Alalshikh: an existential corrective for everything helium believes has afflicted his career, an reply for each flimsy going backmost to the amateurs, from fighters who wouldn't combat him to promoters who failed to beforehand him, a root of eternal respect and stature. But only if helium wins.

In fact, Crawford has been studying Canelo since astatine slightest 2015, erstwhile helium showed up astatine Mandalay Bay to ticker Alvarez bushed a aboriginal Hall of Famer, Miguel Cotto, for his archetypal middleweight title. Crawford, by comparison, past held the WBO inferior welterweight title. "I didn't deliberation warring Canelo would beryllium a thing," helium says. "We were excessively acold isolated successful value classes."

Gradually, though, it would go a thing. In 2021, Crawford -- by past a welterweight champion, though desperately lacking for worthy opponents -- attended Alvarez's stay-busy combat against idiosyncratic named Avni Yildirim successful Miami. Canelo, present the WBC's 168-pound champion, knocked retired Yildirim successful the 3rd round. But adjacent arsenic helium did, the effect had been planted. Crawford wouldn't notation it successful public, but it was successful the backmost of his mind.

By 2023, though, helium had begun his behind-the-scenes run to onshore a Canelo fight. Late that year, helium met with then-WBO president Francisco "Paco" Valcarcel successful Puerto Rico and broached the idea.

"I was shocked," recalls Valcarcel. While Crawford had present beaten Errol Spence Jr. to go undisputed astatine 147 pounds, Canelo -- who had already won a satellite rubric by knockout astatine 175 -- was undisputed astatine 168. "Why don't you hold a mates years?" Valcarcel advised gently.

"I can't w...