Canelo Alvarez doesn’t see UFC as competition.
The boxing superstar returns to action on Sept. 14, when he defends his WBA, WBC, and WBO super middleweight titles against Edgar Berlanga (22-0, 17 KOs). Alvarez’s 66th pro bout takes place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the same night as UFC 306, which goes down at the new Sphere venue just a few blocks away.
UFC CEO Dana White has expressed his annoyance at MGM choosing T-Mobile Arena as the location for their fight, and star Conor McGregor warned that UFC’s show will overshadow Alvarez vs. Berlanga.
Alvarez (61-2-2, 39 KOs) responded to the trash talk in an interview on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game. Suffice to say, he’s confident he’ll beat UFC on Mexican Independence Day weekend.
“It’s just different,” Alvarez said. “Maybe other boxing matches, maybe, but Canelo is different. There are other kind of fights, but Canelo is just different. I don’t care if the UFC is there, when Canelo fights, it’s different.”
One knock against Alvarez’s upcoming matchup is that Berlanga lacks the notoriety of some of Alvarez’s other challenger options, namely WBC interim champion David Benavidez. Saudi promoter Turki Alalshikh also accused Alvarez of intentionally pricing himself out of negotiations for a superfight with Terence Crawford, to which Alvarez simply responded with a laughing emoji.
Alvarez explained why he feels justified in defending against Berlanga in the face of calls to take on other opponents.
“Look, at some point all the fighters did [what they were told],” Alvarez said. [Oscar] De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather, Julio Cesar Chavez, Mike Tyson, everybody did this. There are stars and superstars and they made the championship, not the championship made them. So it’s way different. I come and I do my career and I fight with [Miguel] Cotto with a clause, and I fight with Mayweather with a clause, and I fight with everybody to build the Canelo Alvarez I am. Right now I can do whatever I want.
“The IBF [says], ‘Hey, you need to fight with this because this.’ Who’s [William] Scull? I never hear about him, just when they say, ‘This is your mandatory.’ I never hear about him. I don’t want to do whatever they want. I want to do what I want. In this position I can do whatever I want. Because I deserve it, because of all I did. They said, ‘You don’t want to fight [Gennady] Golovkin,’ I fight him. [Erislandy] Lara, I fight him. Callum Smith, Billy Joe Saunders, Caleb Plant, [Austin] Trout, Mayweather, Cotto, [Dmitry] Bivol, everything. I did everything, and now [Berlanga]. But like I said, I did everything and now I can ask whatever I want and I can do whatever I want.”
