Canelo Alvarez was once made to wait over an hour to walk for a world title fight due to delays caused by the UFC, but he insists Dana White isn’t to blame.
Back in 2019, UFC 244 at Madison Square Garden went head-to-head with Alvarez’s historic challenge for Sergey Kovalev’s light-heavyweight world title. Promoters and broadcasters at the MGM Grand Garden Arena decided to push their show back, even showing the UFC at the famed venue.
It led to a viral image of Alvarez seemingly half asleep on a leather couch while fully gloved up and ready to fight. However, he holds no ill will with White, particularly as the pair are due to join up for a September 13 super-fight between him and Terence Crawford on Netflix.
UFC 244 caused a massive delay to Canelo Alvarez’s historic title fight
On November 2, 2019 the entire combat sport world was watching Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal’s showdown for the inaugural BMF title. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson was drafted in to present the belt, and Madison Square Garden drew in a gate of over $6,575,996.
However, across the United States in Las Vegas, Canelo Alvarez was set to make history of his own. After winning his first world title as low as super-welterweight, the Mexican moved up to light-heavyweight to compete with Sergey Kovalev for yet another belt.
Boxing’s biggest star was forced to wait over an hour after DAZN reached a deal with the UFC and ESPN to delay their broadcast. Dana White seemed stunned by the developments, noting that he couldn’t have dreamed of such a scenario in the past.
“So we were sitting there, and MGM called and said that, ‘You guys are halfway through your co-main event right now,” White told reporters in New York City. “’People are losing their minds here,’ or whatever. ‘Can we show the Diaz fight at the MGM?’
“I was just like, ‘Holy s—-! This is crazy! This is getting crazier by the minute!’ I woke up and dreamed all this, that it could happen. It was nuts. And, of course, we said yes, and they did (show it).”
Canelo Alvarez insists there was never any feud with Dana White over Kovalev incident
Despite the incident in 2019, it never caused any bad blood between Alvarez and White. The pair are now working together in a promotional capacity for September 13’s Netflix super-fight with Terence Crawford, which is expected to be the biggest fight of the year.
Asked by Bloody Elbow in Las Vegas if he had forgiven White, Alvarez replied that he was never the issue, simply answering: “F—ing, that platform made me wait.”
Photo by David Becker/Getty Images for Netflix
He did continue to note that it was DAZN and Golden Boy Promotions he had more of an issue with, saying: “But I got mad after that. Not about him [Dana], I just never wait for anybody.”
White then added: “I don’t think we ever had a beef about that, listen I’ve known Canelo for a while, we’ve never had a problem ever. Super nice guy with good people, same with Crawford, it’s a great situation because I actually like both guys.”