Canelo Alvarez is entering a new phase of his career. He’ll be taking on a fighter named Anvi Yildirim to defend two of his super middleweight title belts.
Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens is the venue – the first time it will host a championship fight. Fans are allowed to watch, and they’ll be able to accommodate about 13,000 of them. Whether they’ll draw that much is another story. There are fight fans in south Florida, but it’s not like Southern California or Texas in that there are not that many who come from Mexico.
Where to Bet on the Canelo Alvarez Fight
DAZN continues to stay involved with Canelo (54-1-2, 36 KO’s), even if Golden Boy, which was more or less disposed of as a result of a legal proceeding, isn’t. Their interests lie in selling monthly subscriptions, which, if you are doing it on a monthly basis, are $19.99.
But you can watch the fight even if you aren’t a DAZN subscriber. You can pay $49.99 to do that through your cable apparatus. What you will get with that is a voucher with a gift code for a four-month DAZN subscription.
That’s just another way to get you in the fold.
Here are the boxing betting odds as they are posted at America’s Bookie:
Canelo Alvarez -5000
Avni Yildirim +1600
This is Alvarez’s 58th pro fight. But it is his debut in the role of a promoter. His own promoter, in fact. Canelo Promotions represents what every big-name fighter should do if he has the leverage, which is to go into business for himself, sinking or swimming on his own.
He’s going to swim, of course, because he is doing business with the streaming carrier that can pay him top-dollar, and has the doors open to sponsors and venues.
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It also allows him to pursue his chosen path, which is to unify the 168-pound (super middleweight) titles. That means that should he get by Yildirim (21-2,13 KO’s), the mandatory WBC challenger, who will also be fighting for the WBA championship, he will move on to fight Billy Joe Saunders for the WBO belt, then Caleb Plant for the IBF crown (Author’s note: I hope I got all that alphabet stuff correct; since I left the business it became much less significant to me).
It will likely happen, because it is important to Alvarez. And these guys will wait for him. They will accommodate him, because a fight with Canelo represents the biggest payday of their careers.
But should anybody be looking past Yildirim? Casual fans have not heard of him, and therefore he is widely dismissed. And he has not had a star-studded roster of opponents – his two most well-known foes, Chris Eubank Jr. and Anthony Dirrell – have dealt him his two defeats.
In looking at this guy, he comes off as a tough, strong guy. There is no mystery about him; he put his hands up and comes to his opponent. It is clear that his objective to mix it upon the inside, but he likes to counter-punch. Sometimes he tends to stand in front of his opponent a little too much without letting his hands go. As such, he is there to be hit. And in exchanges, he leaves himself open.
As America’s Bookie customers may have seen, Yildirim was able to give Dirrell one of his toughest fights because he was able to impose himself physically much of the time. And Dirrell didn’t follow a game plan that included a lot of movement. He got cut up, which stopped the fight, and he escaped with a technical decision.
With Canelo, it promises to be a different story, because if Yildirim is there to be hit, he WILL get hit with some authority. Alvarez also has the ability to pop in and pop out of trouble, because he has the luxury of knowing that his opponent is in no way elusive.
Yildirim’s chances here rely on the possibility of being able to use his strength and style to wear down Alvarez. He certainly isn’t going to outbox him or jab him to death. And we feel obligated to point out that while Canelo has moved up the ladder through 147, 154, 160, 168 and even 175 pounds in his championship career, Yildirim is much more natural at the weight. In fact, he began his career as a light heavyweight and then moved down to the super middleweight (168-pound) class.
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But in the process of trying to wear Alvarez down, he’ll have to be busy enough, and more importantly, he’s going to have to take some punishment. So the question will arise as to how much he can possibly absorb. It’s not something to be dealt with abstractly; it might wind up being the most plausible part of the betting proposition we can engage in. How far can Yildirim possibly go? Does he have the kind of wherewithal to go some rounds?
My guess is that he won’t get that far, because he’s going to get hit cleanly by someone who can do it with some precision. And there will be enough of that to end it about midway through. There are prices out there hovering between +600 and +700 that Alvarez will win this on a decision or technical decision. I don’t know; maybe that’s worth considering, on the off-chance that Yildirim can survive, although we would suggest that survival is often reserved for the guys who are savvy enough to buy time in various ways, like movement, and Yildirim doesn’t possess it.
Then again, who knows if he’ll lead with his head, as he seemed to do a little against Dirrell. That one ended in a technical decision. Hey, we cover all the bases if we can!
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