Hamzah Sheeraz’s bruising KO of once-beaten Edgar Berlanga on Ring III card easily could have been anything but a star-making performance. Any sort of loss would have been a huge setback, and any win invites inevitable comparisons to Canelo Álvarez’s dull victory over Berlanga last year. It was an opportunity, certainly, just one with caveats.

The only way for Sheeraz to seize hold of the narrative and create his own path to glory was to outdo Canelo’s win entirely. And Sheeraz did one better: on an entertaining and well-matched fight card, he stole the show with the only knockout.

A more slow-baked stoppage probably would have done the trick just fine too; had Sheeraz slowly broken Berlanga down and taken him out later, that still would have been an improvement on Canelo’s dominant yet tedious win. So Sheeraz sent a message to the rest of the division with a vicious knockout before quelling recent concerns about boring fights in his post-fight interviews.

“If I get the opportunity to fight [Canelo], it won’t be one of those [fights] where I try to nick it on points,” Sheeraz said. “I will stand in the middle with him and have it out… and whoever lands first, I suppose they get knocked out, don’t they?”

It’s easy to envision the heavy-handed 6-foot-3 Sheeraz taking the fight to Álvarez, who rarely fights at a pace outside of his comfort zone. Sheeraz is also younger and fresher, not to mention hungry for glory. But any technical analysis is moot without a clear pathway to the fight, and a reason to make it.

Sheeraz (22-0-1, 18 KOs) has less than one-third the professional experience of Álvarez (63-2-2, 39 KOs). The numerical mismatch is balanced considerably by acknowledging that Canelo is an outlier in terms of world-class experience and growing older by the day. Besides, William Scull was 23-0 and Berlanga himself 22-0 going into their opportunities against Canelo, thus there is no apparent minimum amount of pro fights an opponent must have.

Another victory or two over recognizable names in the meanwhile should be plenty to keep Sheeraz in the running for a Canelo fight, which leaves a roadblock of pound-for-pound proportions called Terence Crawford.

Canelo-Crawford, the surprise matchup that many skeptics have warmed to, figures to be one of the biggest fights of recent years. It’s incredibly rare when world-class fighters with legitimate arguments as the best in the world are close enough in weight to face one another, and rarer still when means, opportunity and motivation combine to actually make the fight happen.

But short of some pre-fight anomaly, Canelo should be favored to win. It’s unclear if Crawford will be able to carry up his speed and power at least two divisions, or absorb the punch of an opponent that much larger. A Canelo win isn’t a foregone conclusion, though any top-level fighter stepping into the ring twice a year maximum has to look beyond the next outing.

In other words, pondering the possibility of Canelo-Sheeraz falls short of sacrilege.

On the contrary, a potential Canelo-Sheeraz fight has at least one thing going for it that few other Canelo events could: the ability to easily fill a massive stadium.

Despite Sheeraz’s recent arrival on the big stage and not having headlined major cards, the young super middleweight is part of one of the world’s most tight-knit fight communities. British boxing fans consistently show out for their own, and recent history proves it.

Amazingly, four of the top 10 attendances in boxing history have taken place in the U.K. in the last 11 years. Sheeraz actually won the European middleweight title on the undercard of the biggest U.K. boxing attendance ever, Daniel Dubois’ knockout of Anthony Joshua, which drew just short of 100,000.

Canelo is no stranger to drawing a crowd, though. He’s fought in front of more than 50,000 multiple times and usually sells out large venues. And on nationalistic terms, the sport’s biggest ever paid attendance took place in Canelo’s native México, when Julio César Chávez slaughtered Greg Haugen in front of 130,000 in Mexico City.

Wherever the fight takes place, the México vs. U.K. rivalry sells. In the 1960s, a three-fight series between featherweights Vicente Saldívar and Howard Winstone proved to be a popular attraction, and in the '70s, John H. Stracey dethroned welterweight champion José Nápoles before losing the title to Carlos Palomino six months later. Salvador Sánchez and Pat Cowdell continued matters in the '80s, and it only got better from there.

In the last few years, Mexican fighters crossing the Atlantic to trouble British opponents has even developed into a funny trope. Leigh Wood’s loss to Mauricio Lara in 2023 significantly derailed his career, and just weeks ago Galal Yafai was handed his first loss and beaten up by Francisco Rodríguez, though the victor's problematic performance enhancing drug test results could alter the result.

Sheeraz needs some experience, and he’ll get it no matter which way his career goes. And Álvarez has accomplished enough that he’s not out of place among some of the greatest Mexican fighters of all time. But timing is everything in boxing. Sheeraz may just find that he got the right win at the right time to set him up for life.