There are just hours to go until the Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford showdown.
Arguably the biggest fight of the year takes place on Saturday as Canelo defends his undisputed super-middleweight crown against Crawford at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Canelo is yet to ever taste defeat at 168lbs, but will now take on a fellow pound-for-pound star, with Crawford moving up two weight divisions in order to challenge the Mexican icon.
This weekend’s bout has generated a lot of strong opinions from plenty of the sport’s biggest names, and Top Rank CEO Bob Arum has now offered his final thoughts on the match-up.
Arum knows Crawford extremely well, having promoted the American for a number of years before the pair split in 2023 ahead of ‘Bud’ becoming undisputed welterweight champion.
Speaking to K.O Artist Sports, Arum revealed that he thinks both fighters are potentially past their best, and the winner won’t be the pound-for-pound number one.
“Canelo has been slipping. It’s not the Canelo that fought three or four years ago. The one opponent you can never beat as a fighter is father time, and Crawford has been superb as a welterweight, but looked fairly average at junior-middleweight, and now at super-middleweight how is he going to look? I don’t think the winner will be the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world.”
Instead, Arum feels that his man Naoya Inoue is the current number one pound-for-pound fighter in the world, with the Japanese superstar also in action this weekend as he defends his undisputed super-bantamweight titles against Murodjon Akhmadaliev.
