Canelo Alvarez was a huge favorite entering Saturday’s bout against William Scull with BetMGM’s odds at -3000, and the Mexican superstar delivered, cruising to a unanimous 12-round decision to become the undisputed 168-pound champion for the second time.
The fight in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which was early Sunday morning local time, was a sluggish affair with only 445 punches thrown, according to CompuBox. It is the fewest combined punches in a 12-round fight in CompuBox’s 40-year history.
“It was a boring fight,” Alvarez said in his post-match comments. “A fighter not trying to win and just trying to survive. I hate those kind of fighters.”
The win locked up a Sept. 12 showdown against Terence Crawford at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas that will be one of the biggest fights in recent boxing history. Crawford was in attendance in Riyadh, and after the bout, he immediately entered the ring for a faceoff with Alvarez.
“Crawford is one of the best out there,” Alvarez said. “I like to share the ring with that kind of fighter.”
The Scull fight marked Canelo’s first outside of North America, and the location was no accident. In February, Alcarez signed a four-fight deal with Turki Alalshikh, the head of Riyadh Season and chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority. The package is worth a reported $400 million. Sportico could not confirm Canelo’s Saturday payout ahead of the bout.
Saudi Arabia has leaned hard into boxing behind Alalshikh, who is launching a boxing promotion with UFC parent TKO Group Holdings and Sela, an entertainment subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
Last year, Alalshikh brought Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury to Saudi Arabia for a pair of fights that earned each boxer well over $100 million. They ranked third (Fury, $147 million) and seventh (Usyk, $122 million) in Sportico’s 100 highest-paid athletes of 2024. Alvarez ranked No. 20 at $73 million, including $8 million in endorsements.
Cinco de Mayo annually represents boxing’s biggest weekend, and Alvarez, who inherited the mantle of boxing’s biggest pay-per-view star from Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, has now been featured in 11 of them.
Alvarez, who will be 35 in July, turned pro 20 years ago, and his record stands at 63-2-2, with the only losses to Mayweather in 2013 and Dmitry Bivol in 2022. Canelo’s fight paydays have typically ranged from $35 million to $45 million over the past seven years and pushed his cumulative career earnings including endorsements through the end of 2024 to an estimated $620 million, or $730 million adjusted for inflation. The total is tied at No. 27 with George Foreman among the highest-paid athletes of all time.
Canelo’s current Saudi deal will likely push his career earnings past $1 billion.
