Canelo Alvarez sends public message that if Turki Alalshikh wants to work with him, he needs to play by his rules.
Boxing might just have its newest cold war featuring Canelo Alvarez and Turki Alalshikh, who has been making the recent biggest splashes in the sport. Alalshikh’s had been actively pursuing a fight with Canelo on behalf of Terence Crawford, but just recently expressed a change of heart. That stark contrast seemed to insinuate some behind the scenes tensions between the two, which has started to spill over publicly.
So when asked about his thoughts on fighting Crawford, Canelo continued to maintain that it’s not something he’s particularly looking for.
“Crawford needs to fight Teofimo and then we’ll see, right,” Canelo said. “At the end of the day, like I say before, I’m not asking for that fight. They want to make that fight because it’s a payday obviously, but I don’t want that fight. I think Teofimo deserve [that fight] more than me.
Then when asked about Turki Alalshikh saying he’s no longer interested in making that fight anyway, after openly pushing that agenda for some time now, Canelo sent this message.
“My response to Turki is this,” Canelo began. “Yesterday, they text me. They text me and say ‘we can talk about the fight in February with Crawford. They text me yesterday and I say ‘look, I’m not going to talk about any other fight, I’m focused 100% on this fight.’
“Look, I don’t like the way he talk, and I’m not in this position because of [anyone else]. I’m in this position. If he wants to work with me it’s in my way, not in their way. I don’t need it.
“It’s not the way to approach to me. Look, I respect everybody, and I respect Turki, but look, if he wants to work with me it needs to be my way.”
Alalshikh would then issue a public response taking shots at Canelo upon hearing the comments.
“I heard what Canelo said that he respects me but doesn’t like the way we do business,” Alalshikh wrote. “As for him respecting me, it doesn’t matter to me if he does or not. As for the way I do business, I know why he doesn’t like it, because I only target big fights at fair prices, so of course anyone who likes easy fights won’t like that. And I know how he feels after losing to Bivol, so he’s been looking for easier fights ever since.
“Also, I’m not the one who’s afraid of fighting Benavidez or Crawford. Therefore, I knew he was wasting our time and making excuses with big amounts of money that can’t be paid. So I’m continuing my way to make big fights that serve the boxing world, and he’s on his way to making easy show-only fights.”
