Canelo’s Popularity Trumps Sporting Merit, Says Malignaggi

Boxing expert Paulie Malignaggi is annoyed by unified super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez’s decision to pick and choose his opponents, selecting easier options while freezing out the talented guys.

We just witnessed how two quality 168-pound fighters, David Benavidez and David Morrell, gave up on the super middleweight division after being ignored by Canelo. Instead of Canelo fighting the best, he’s dining on weaker guys with inflated resumes: Edgar Berlanga, Jaime Munguia, John Ryder, and Caleb Plant.

The sanctioning bodies aren’t holding Canelo’s feet to the fire to force him to fight his mandatory challengers, and he’s not bending to pressure from the media to step it up. Malignaggi feels Canelo can ignore the pressure and the criticism because he’s so popular.

His large fan base will continue to support him no matter who he fights, and they don’t care that he’s not interested in fighting risky fighters. They’re happy to pay $90 to watch Canelo defend against Berlanga, a fighter with a record that has no substance to it.

Popularity Breeds Political Control

“If you don’t fight your top contenders, you’re going to be criticized. If you’re able to let it go and not let it affect you, you still are a star,” said boxing expert Paulie Malignaggi to the Probox TV YouTube channel, talking about Canelo Alvarez picking and choosing who he’ll fight as the unified super middleweight champion.

“Although this is a sport, it’s also about who is the most popular. We’ve seen that a lot in combat sports in recent years with the advent of social media, where the most popular guy isn’t necessarily the best. You have more political control if you’re more popular than some of the guys who may be better than you.

“At this point, is Canelo the best? Most people would say no. He can live off that popularity for as long as he wants, and remain popular regardless. When he says he’s the best when he’s clearly not the best in his weight class, it allows him to live in that denial because of the popularity he has.

For regular fighters, they must fight the best to make money, and gain popularity. They can’t take soft opposition without it stunting their careers. We’re seeing that with Shakur Stevenson. He’s fighting soft opposition and his popularity is failing to increase.

But with Canelo, he can fight anyone because he already has a massive fan base, and they’ve shown repeatedly that they’re fine with him fighting lesser guys like Munguia, Ryder, Plant, and Jermell Charlo.

“If you’re going to live that way, you have to take that approach. There’s nothing wrong from a sporting sense of it, but from a personal sense, if that’s the way he has to approach it, then he’s doing it right,” said Malignaggi about Canelo.

“He’s an old 33. He’s been around the block” said Chris Algieri about Canelo.