Fans invited to Canelo-Kovalev press conference

WBA middleweight/WBC Franchise/WBA super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez (50-1-2, 34 KOs) and WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (34-3-1, 28 KOs) will face off for the first time on Wednesday at a press conference at Union Station (800 N Alameda St.) in Los Angeles. The event will take place at 5PM and boxing fans are invited to attend. Arrive at 3PM for the best spots.

The Canelo-Kovalev fight will take place November 2 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas and will be streamed live exclusively on DAZN.

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  • Odds are that this will be one of the most scripted press conferences in boxing history. ODH went out of his way to invite Don King as well as Floyd Money Mayweather to help work on the script.

  • Can’t wait. I think Canelo is biting off more than he can chew if Kovalev of the last fight shows up. Oscar had this one timed just right. Right after a tough fight taking him weeks to heal. I mean maybe December 2nd. They knew he would take it. Good old Oscar always looking for the advantage.

    • I agree. The problem is as a boxer who is aged and is in a big fight, he probably needed an extra month or two to recover. That’s my only concern. How he’ll train, yet preserve his body after a war.

      • Kova will not be able to seriously spar more than a week or max. 10 days. That’s why he is the perfect prey for Canelo: the most recognized name he can fight with the least risk. Canelo just has to make it through the first few rounds, and he will be in the clear = get the win.

      • Whether the fight is fixed or not, its a staged circus show and not an honest contest.

        Kova is not a top 3 fighter in the division anymore, and he will not have enough time to even recover from Yarde’s body punches in their last fight.

        Its just a cheap and fake title attempt by Canelo. If he would want a legitimate LHW title, he would have to go through the winner of Beterbiev – Gvozdyk.

        Kova – Canelo is all hype, zero substance. But that’s not what the spoon fed masses want to hear :))

        • Thats a bunch of BS people forget Canelo already just faced the top guys at 160 (Jacobs and GGG) while Andrade and Charlo keep cherry picking avoiding each other. Racist people just hate on Canelo but do you remember when Roy Jones Jr. Went from LHW to Hw to fight Ruiz? Probably the worst HW champ in history yet nobody gave him shit for not fighting Lennox Lewis. Because even fighting Ruiz was pretty impressive. So for Canelo to move up and fight Kovalev is a big deal imo.

  • Everyone knows that Oscar will make sure the scales are tipped in Canelos favor. It will be stipulated that Kovalev must agree to a catch weight of 169. There will also be rehydration clauses. To add to it, Kovalev will need to wear 108 ounce gloves, an eye patch on one eye and agree not to train until a week before the fight. All the while Canelo (will be absorbing clenbuterol) will be up to his old drug cheat tricks. All of this will have already been well thought out by his cross-dressing drag queen promoter, Olivia de la Hoya.

  • Canelo would not take this fight, unless:

    1) He saw a weakness in the aging Kovalev, enabling him to time a haymaker like he did with Khan.
    2) He was certain he could win a decision, with of course the judges favoring his continuing to be propped up as “boxing’s superstar” to help hype the sport.
    3) He can get Kovalev to fight at a lesser weight, so that the aging Kovalev is sapped of strength.
    4) The matchup, because of Kovalev’s name and title, can generate maximum interest with a very well-planned, scripted marketing scheme where Canelo acts like he’s enraged and he a Kovalev genuinely are ready to kill each other.
    5) Kovalev was willing to risk his title by dropping below a healthy weight, just so he could make a big payday at this tail end of his career.

    Boxing was once a very dignified sport, full of true warriors who not only respected the sport itself, but respected each other. This type of superficial, manufactured, cheesy hype nonsense wasn’t needed to sell fights, since every fight promised to be an interesting matchup between two fighters who would give all they had in a honest effort. Now it’s about staging matches through hype, with predictable results in favor of favored fighters. GGG beat Canelo twice, yet never came away with a win. I don’t know what makes people think that Kovalev will fare any better, especially under terms favorable too Canelo.

    • DAZN had to put this fight together before the end of their billing cycle. Kovalev will get paid so much that he couldn’t refuse, even though he will not have enough time to recover from his last fight. All elements of the fight favor Canelo (as usual) but Kovalev will show at least a few good rounds.

      The real light heavyweight fight of the year is Beterbiev against Gvozdyk – but the majority of people who know about the Canelo-Kova fight, won’t even be aware of that fight. That’s how easy it has become for the media to control people’s minds.

      Fully agree on the GGG robberies but the media has largely succeeded to brainwash people to accept the results as they are, no matter how outrageous. Adalaide Byrd is still a judge and still proud of her criminal scoring of the Canel-GGG fight.

  • Same sh*t different day.
    Canelo looking for any advantage he can.
    A well rested Canelo takes on aging, faded, fragile and straight off a tough fight Kovalev.
    Nice negotiation.
    The undisputed champ of Cherry picking.

    • Brief, but very accurate analysis.

      Kova was almost done in round 8 against Yarde and it will take him at least 4-6 weeks to recover from those punches. He will be able to train for maybe 1 week before he will get into the ring with Canelo who is well rested and has a regular training camp.

  • Glenello body punching will put an end to Kovalev, Yarde was badly prepared by a loudmouth trainer, that strives to be more profiled than the fighter. Glenello`s camp will be much more professional .

    • One day someone will write a book about who of the two was worse for boxing :))

      I think the main difference between the two is that DK was/is an overt brute criminal and Oscar a much more refined but equally ruthless one. In other words, its a hard pick :))

  • I think a lot of people are automatically writing Kovalev off and simply handing this one to Canelo.
    It’s true that Canelo typically rehydrates to light heavy but, up the this point, He’s never taken a square shot from an actual light-heavy. Especially one with the KO ratio that Kovalev has.
    I agree that it was a carefully crafted risk but unless they are truly able to convince Kovalev to agree to some type of restriction on re-hydration on whatever catch-weight they propose, Canelo could wind up getting busted up pretty bad.
    Canelo has some pretty sturdy whiskers. He proved that against Golovkin.
    It’ll be fun to see how this plays out either way.

  • This is a good matchup, a good for boxing. A fix fight?, not a chance, only an ignorant person with zero knowledge about boxing could say that. Behind Kovalev is one of the few honest persons in this business, Kathy Duva. Catchup weight? No; Kovalev has been very clear he can’t do that, and the only way is to cut one of his arms.
    Judging has been inconsistent since many years ago, and has been futile any effort to correct it.
    Any time a megastar is in a difficult fight, judges find the way to save the person of interest. Ali vs. Norton, Hagler vs Leonard, De La Hoya vs Felix Sturm, Fernando Vargas vs Winky Wright, Pacquiao vs. Marquez, Mayweather vs. Jose Luis Castllo and so on. What new we should expect with Canelo?
    Kill the cash cow by giving the decision to Lara or Golovkin?
    I am sure Canelo vs. Kovalev is a very interesting fight, especially the first 6 rounds, where Kovalev might still fresh and powerful. Also note that Kovalev at 6′.0″ is not really a huge guy.
    Not an easy fight for any middleweight to go and fight a light heavyweight of Kovalev caliber, even though he is in the twilight of his great boxing career, maybe this the main reason why he was chosen to fight Canelo.

    • Good points, and I too think that especially the first 6 rounds will be competitive. After that, it will be all Canelo. Kova will hardly be able to do any serious sparring before the fight, so there is no need to even fix the fight. In short, you have an aged fighter who just came out of a very tough fight and whose weakness is exactly a much younger and well rested opponent’s strength: body punches. Guess how the fight will end?

      But if the fight would be close for some miraculous reason, we all know it would go in Canelo’s favor because he is THE cash cow of boxing at the moment. That’s another reason, why this fight doesn’t even need to be fixed. The GGG-Canelo verdict by Adalaide was 99.999% fixed.

      So, all Kova can really do and hope for, is to somehow get to Canelo in the first few rounds, and not just get to him, but knock him out cold. Chances of that are slim, but its not impossible.

      What I do not agree with, is that this is a defining, important or interesting fight in the LHW division: the real kings of the division are Beterbiev and Gvozdyk. This will be the most important fight in this division since Kova-Ward.

    • In most of the important fights only few conditions are revealed. I haven’t heard anything about catchup weight. Some conditions that might occur in order to favor Canelo are the brand of gloves (mos likely no Cleto Reyes allowed), ring size (the bigger the better), weight limit allowed the day of the fight, trunk high permitted and maybe the referee in charge. Is what I think

  • first of all my hat off to anybody that has the cojones to get in the ring ! and then to all you people that say the fights are fixed ,when was the last time you yourself fixed one ? or the first time you yourself fixed it ? oh nevermind you just talk cuz you have a mouth or are a .hiding behind a computer gangster ?
    c

    • Charlene: I would like to have more sympathy for your comment, but if there is one sport in the world that is particularly known for corruption/fixed fights, its boxing.

      To get in the ring doesn’t take more balls than most other sports: as long as the match up is somewhat even, any fighter who really loves to fight, will be happy to be in the ring. Tyson was so happy to be in the ring that he was highly disappointed when he knocked out most guys in the first round already because he still wanted to fight, even if it had to be in the street afterwards.

      I think its safe to say that no one in this forum has the capacity to fix a fight. That’s usually done by promoters or other people with financial interests. If you are interested in a crash course, contact Oscar.

      The fans, however, can influence the boxing industry because they buy their product. The upcoming Kova-Canelo fight is nothing but a cheap circus show that doesn’t even need to be fixed. This fight would have been ok if it would have been made before Ward damaged Kova for life. But people will pay for it, so these kind of shows will go on. As I mentioned in other comments: the real LHW kings at the moment are Beterbiev and Gvozdyk. Both would dispose of an aged Kova by KO, and both would beat Canelo if the fight would happen today. That’s the kind of fight people should pay for and not a circus show like Mayweather vs. McGregor or Canelo vs. an almost retired Kovalev.

  • Kovalev just had a brutal war less than a month ago. This fight should be happening in December the earliest. Talk about not giving yourself the best chance to win. I don’t understand why Kovalev is coming back so quick. Canelo isn’t going to fight anyone else. He has options, but those fights are not as easy as fighting a possibly washed up big named fighter like Krusher.

    • Canyada: these are all valid points, but Kovalev had no other choice. For pure business reasons, DAZN forced the fight in early November (end of billing cycle) and Kova is getting paid an obscene amount to take the fight, so he is taking it. If he would have not taken it, ODLH would have found another prey = the weakest champ of any division Canelo can fight in.

  • Heck yeah!!!! Get paid champ you earned your strips.if boxing was easy everyone would do it…10 plus years in the lonliest sport it thr world is a great accomplishment..Let them haters speak their mind while you make your money.

    • Fede: you must be right! Its all about the money….at least for people like you.

      But I agree with you: boxers like GGG have been training hard and fighting for many years (a lot more than 10) buy they still got cheated out of millions of $$. So yes, boxing is not easy, especially in Vegas.

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