Canelo Alvarez (54-1-2, 36 KOs) defends his super middleweight titles against Avni Yildirim (21-2, 12 KOs) on Saturday at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. Canelo is coming out of two fantastic performances against the best fighters Sergey Kovalev and Callum Smith and is having a little breath in terms of the level of competition in former WBC challenger Yildirim.
Yildirim spent most of his career in Germany, but is best known for his knockout defeat to Chris Eubank Jr in the World Boxing Super Series tournament and his technical decision loss to Anthony Dirrell in 2019. He has some athletic qualities, but is extremely technically limited. His style is based on putting on gloves, marching forward and swinging hooks. This strategy is unlikely to be very successful in one of the best defensive fighters in the game. Despite a huge size advantage, Callum Smith could barely put a glove on Alvarez and Yildirim is tailor-made to make Canelo’s defensive and counterattack ability shine.
Canelo is particularly good defensively in the interior, where it combines blocks, defenses and head movements very well. After making his opponent miss, his combinations allow him to dissect the opponent’s guard and he should have no problem passing through Yildirim’s high guard. This should be a showcase for Canelo and hopefully create bigger fights for Canelo in the future. I personally would be very interested to see him face Caleb Plant, but Billy Joe Saunders seems to be the favorite at the moment.
The card originally had an interesting main co-event for the WBC flyweight belt between action fighter Julio Cesar Martinez and astute veteran McWilliams Arroyo, but Martinez had to withdraw with a hand injury. This is the second time that Martinez had to give up this fight and the third time in the last 6 months. The plan is for the fight to be postponed only about a month, and hopefully Martinez can come back and resume what has been a really fun title dispute so far.
Given the circumstances, the main co-event will be a heavyweight clash between Chinese giant Zhilei Zhang (22-0, 17 KOs) and Jerry Forrest (26-4, 20 KOs), but the highlight of the tie is the professional debut of the USA’s best amateur boxer, Keyshawn Davis. Following the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, Davis chose to resign from the Olympics, where he would have been the United States’ best medal hope. Davis, aged just 19, won a pan am bronze medalist, two world bronze medalists and a world champion on his way to the silver medal at the 2019 world championship. The U.S. is unlikely to receive medals at the Olympics without him, but he has the potential to pursue a fantastic professional career.
Canelo vs. Yildirim will air on DAZN on Saturday, February 27 at 8:00 pm ET / 17:00 PT