The poorly promoted fight between Canelo Alvarez and William Scull is occurring this Saturday, May third, and there’s zero buzz about it for his or her event on DAZN PPV at The Venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Marketing Fail
There was little effort by the promoters to construct interest amongst fans for this bout, which is priced at $59.99 on pay-per-view. Fans don’t know who IBF super middleweight champion Scull (23-0,9 KOs) is because he’s never beaten any notable opposition during his profession.
The way in which the Cuban Scull, 32, won his belt with a controversial 12-round decision last October against Vladimir Shishkin makes the hardcore boxing fans view him as a fake belt-holder.
Scull’s Last Six Opponents
– Vladimir Shishkin
– Sean Hemphill
– Cristian Fabian Rios
– Abel Nicolas Adriel
– Evgeny Shvedenko
– Deneb Diaz
For Canelo, 34, this fight is to enable him to recapture his IBF 168-lb title that he relinquished in order that he could take a simple money fight against the previous #1 WBA-ranked Edgar Berlanga on November 14th last yr. Slightly than defend against his IBF-ordered mandatory Scull, Canelo vacated so he could tackle Berlanga in a mismatch.
Artifice of Undisputed
The issue is with the four-belt system. It makes it vital for Canelo to take a time-wasting fight against Scull to recapture his IBF title in one other lackluster fight. That is all for artifice so Alvarez could be the undisputed 168-lb champion when he faces Terence Crawford in October in Turki Alalshikh’s “big fight” in Las Vegas.
A part of the marketing of the Canelo-Crawford fight will center on whether Crawford can capture his third undisputed divisional championship. It’s all to create more interest within the circus fight between Alvarez and Bud, who’s coming up from 154 to challenge him with none experience at 168. It’s completely unfair to the contenders at super middleweight.
Alvarez is a 30-to-1 favorite against Scull, showing this fight will not be expected to be even remotely competitive. For the fans who saw Scull’s last fight against Vladimir Shishkin, it’s not surprising that Canelo is a big favorite. Scull looked terrible.
What the promotion needs is for Crawford to come back out of the woodwork this week and begin talking up his fight with Canelo to get fans looking forward to their fight in October. If Bud Crawford can get people anticipating that contest, they’ll be more motivated to give attention to Saturday’s clash against Scull.
I doubt Crawford will surface to assist out because he’s not into promoting fights, which is certainly one of the explanations he’s didn’t grow to be popular. He’s just lucky that Turki likes him. If not for that, Crawford can be toiling away still at 154, coping with the young sharks like Bakhram Murtazaliev and Vergil Ortiz Jr.
Last Updated on 04/28/2025
