In the hours leading up to super-middleweight champion Saul \u201cCanelo\u201d Alvarez signing a multi-fight deal with Riyadh Season, beginning with a May 3 unification clash with Cuba\u2019s William Scull in Saudi Arabia, it was widely known in boxing circles that the Mexican was in talks about a Las Vegas showdown with Jake Paul instead.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to play your cards,\u201d Alvarez told Barstool Sports when asked if those talks were genuine. \u201cIt would not be a fight [versus Paul] but it would be an event. [It is] not for the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old, 62-2-2 (39 KOs), is now fully focused on Scull, an unbeaten but largely untested IBF belt-holder. He will mark Alvarez\u2019s first bout with a Cuban since Erislandy Lara gave him a tough fight back in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know he has a lot of skill because he had a lot of amateur fights,\u201d Canelo said of his 23-0 (9 KOs) opponent. \u201cThey [Cubans] have a particular style and it\u2019s a little bit difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019ve fought every style and I can adapt to any style. This will be no exception.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bout, Canelo\u2019s first outside of North America, is being dressed up as an undisputed contest, even though it is only so because Canelo gave up the IBF title due to not being interested in fighting Scull in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am already the only undisputed super-middleweight champion so now I will be the only two-time undisputed champion,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get there [Saudi Arabia] many weeks before the fight to get used to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe motivation is to see new countries, to fight in new countries, and at this stage of my career I need that motivation.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the hours leading up to super-middleweight champion Saul \u201cCanelo\u201d Alvarez signing a multi-fight deal with Riyadh Season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,17819,19047,79,16,15,4853],"class_list":{"0":"post-32272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-jake-paul","10":"tag-saul-canelo-alvarez","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-william-scull"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114363279846183159","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}