Canelo Alvarez was once made to attend over an hour to walk for a world title fight attributable to delays brought on by the UFC, but he insists Dana White isn’t in charge.
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 on the MGM Grand Garden Arena decided to push their show back, even showing the UFC on the famed venue.
It led to a viral image of Alvarez seemingly half asleep on a leather couch while fully gloved up and able to fight. Nonetheless, he holds no unwell will with White, particularly because the pair are attributable to meet up for a September 13 super-fight between him and Terence Crawford on Netflix.
UFC 244 caused a large delay to Canelo Alvarez’s historic title fight
On November 2, 2019 the whole 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.
Nonetheless, across the US in Las Vegas, Canelo Alvarez was set to make history of his own. After winning his first world title as little as super-welterweight, the Mexican moved as much as light-heavyweight to compete with Sergey Kovalev for one more belt.
Boxing’s biggest star was forced to attend over an hour after DAZN reached a cope 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 prior to now.
“So we were sitting there, and MGM called and said that, ‘You guys are halfway through your co-main event immediately,” White told reporters in Recent York City. “’Persons are losing their minds here,’ or whatever. ‘Can we show the Diaz fight on the MGM?’
“I used to be identical to, ‘Holy s—-! That is crazy! That is getting crazier by the minute!’ I woke up and dreamed all this, that it could occur. It was nuts. And, after all, we said yes, they usually 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 at the moment are working together in a promotional capability for September 13’s Netflix super-fight with Terence Crawford, which is anticipated to be the most important fight of the 12 months.
Asked by Bloody Elbow in Las Vegas if he had forgiven White, Alvarez replied that he was never the problem, simply answering: “F—ing, that platform made me wait.”
He did proceed to notice that it was DAZN and Golden Boy Promotions he had more of a problem 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 some time, we’ve never had an issue ever. Super nice guy with good people, same with Crawford, it’s an amazing situation because I actually like each guys.”