Canelo Alvarez set to face Sergey Kovalev on Nov. 2 in Las Vegas
Canelo Alvarez’s bid to become the 20th boxer and just the fourth of Mexican descent to win a world title in a fourth different weight class will come on Nov. 2 in Las Vegas when he challenges Sergey Kovalev for the WBO light heavyweight title at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in the main event of a card streamed on DAZN.
Alvarez has won world titles at super welterweight, middleweight and super middleweight in his brilliant career, while fashioning a 52-1-2 mark with 35 knockouts.
It would make him just the fourth Mexican born fighter to win championships in four weight classes, following Hall of Famer Erik Morales (super bantamweight, featherweight, super featherweight and super lightweight); Juan Manuel Marquez (featherweight, super featherweight, lightweight, super lightweight); and Jorge Arce (light flyweight, super flyweight, bantamweight, super bantamweight).
He will have to defeat a physically much larger man who has been at light heavyweight his entire career. At 6 feet tall with a 72½-inch reach, Kovalev will have a 4-inch height advantage and a 1½-inch reach advantage over Alvarez.
In addition, Kovalev (34-3-1, 29 KOs) has the kind of punching power to end the fight with one shot if Alvarez makes a mistake.
It was a long road for Alvarez to get the match done. After he defeated Daniel Jacobs in May in their middleweight title unification bout, Alvarez pointed toward a Kovalev bout in September. DAZN preferred a bout with rival Gennadiy Golovkin, but Alvarez wasn’t interested in a third bout.
Hasty efforts to put the Alvarez-Kovalev fight in Las Vegas on Sept. 14 on Mexican Independence Day weekend fell apart when a deal to extract Kovalev from an already signed bout with Anthony Yarde fell through. Kovalev went on to stop Yarde in the 11th but not before nearly being finished himself.
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