Normally, undercard fights are the appetizer to a full-course boxing meal. And while that will still be the case, Turki Alalshikh wants to give them a bit more of the spotlight.
The owner of The Ring and the head of Riyadh Season announced that for the
Sept. 13 superfight between
Terence Crawford and
Canelo Alvarez (63-2-2, 39 KOs) at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, the undercard will be protracted over several days.
His reasoning? He wants new and fresh talent to emerge.
“The undercard will be between two or three days,“ Alalshikh said on The Ring’s YouTube channel with Rick Reeno and Mike Coppinger. “We now have more than 20 fights to do on the undercard. Ninety-five percent of this card is talent and people around the world have a very big chance to be a star in the future.”
In the case of Alvarez, a fight with
The Ring’s No. 3 fighter never crossed his mind. With them competing in vastly different weight classes over the years, a matchup seemed far-fetched. That is, until Crawford began calling him out.
After winning a belt in his fourth division against
Israil Madrimov on Aug. 3, Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) flirted with unifying the division. But after that became arduous because of mundane contract talks, he turned his sights on Alvarez.
The Mexican star was never interested in fighting him, but he'll have a chance to hand Crawford the first defeat of his career.
William Scull (23-1, 9 KOs), Alvarez's most recent opponent, was the
third consecutive undefeated fighter he'd bested.
Alalshikh wants to craft Canelo-Crawford into a grand spectacle. To do that, he believes stretching the undercard makes perfect sense.
“It must be something like this.”