Team Canelo has conflicting notions of America being their ‘home’ base
Ahead of his upcoming unification bout, WBO World Super Middleweight champion “Superb” Billy Joe Saunders (30-0, 14 KO’s) raised concerns about bias. Saunders felt as if WBA Super and WBC World Super Middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (55-1-2, 37 KO’s) was stacking the deck against him. As a UK fighter traveling to the states, he was dismayed that there would be no English judges in attendance. Given Canelo’s popularity in the USA, he felt this would provide an unequal playing field.
When Alvarez was presented these sentiments, he claimed that these were nothing but hollow excuses. The redhead would rather smugly rationalize that he was a Mexican fighter and thus there could be no bias. Canelo would go on to point out how there were no Mexican judges as if to show he had no advantage. For anyone even remotely familiar with the unified champion, they would know that he is a very familiar American staple at this point in his career. There is no way that Canelo himself is unaware of his own popularity and influence here in America. This is why his answer and rationale was so blatantly contrived.
THE TRUTH COMES SHINING THROUGH!
It is funny because just a few short days later, his chief second gave a radically different viewpoint of how Team Alvarez perceives their place in America. While conducting an interview with Behind the Gloves, Eddy Reynoso, Canelo’s head trainer, was discussing an altercation that the two teams had had. During the verbal exchange, the typically laidback and reserved Alvarez called a member of Team Saunders “a fucking pussy.” Reynoso explained this was done because Canelo was not going to stand for any disrespect from their rivals. Yet it was the thinking behind the statement that so contradicted what his lead charge had claimed.
“Yes we had that interaction with them yesterday. You know they said something the first time and we didn’t say anything. The second time we had to respond! This is kind of our second home, Texas is our home! You’re not going to disrespect us Mexicans, we don’t like that. So of course we had to respond…Yes, this is the fourth, fifth time that we fought here. So we are not going to let him disrespect us here in our home, in our backyard. This is our home!”
COME ON MAN, KEEP IT REAL!
So when Saunders spoke of wanting to have some English judges, this is exactly what he meant. He understood that Canelo was competing in his well-established second home. That is why Canelo’s attempt to feign ignorance and pretend that he too was merely another foreigner himself was essentially a flat-out lie. Now, his own trainer basing their contempt on loyalty to the land, alone, highlights this fact more stringently.
In the end, no one truly believed Canelo’s used car salesman brand of spinoff. Who does not realize that, Mexican or not, he is an American darling at this point? He has fought exclusively in the states for the past decade. Further, as his own trainer has verified, Team Canelo openly views Texas as their adopted second home. It just would have been nice had Alvarez not played dumb and addressed the notion in a more stand-up fashion. Ultimately however, all is fair in love and war, and in just a few short days these two men will engage in bloody battle. Let them hash out any lingering grievances there!
By: Bakari Simpson
