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Ryan Hockensmith
THE RAIN FEELS like needle pricks pelting down on umbrellas and faces on Sunday morning in New York City. And yet, Canelo Alvarez is wearing sunglasses.
He’s on the second leg of a three-leg tour to promote his upcoming Sept. 13 mega-fight against Terence Crawford. Most of the assembled media underneath the Javits Center is either shaking out or saying goodbye to their umbrellas — raindrops over New York City on an 80-plus degree day in June always seem to have a little extra mustard on them.
But Alvarez is dry and gleaming. Earlier that morning, he had purchased a shiny new, special-edition Jacob & Co. watch for a little under $500,000, paid for on his no-max credit card. Maybe that’s why he needs the sunglasses.
“Almost a half million,” he clarifies. But he has a big, wide smile when he says that. He’s proud of his purchase.
He plows through roughly 30 minutes of a steady string of interviewers introducing themselves and then turning on a camera in his face. So, the sunglasses start to feel like preventative eye health care rather than a fashion statement, boredom mask or hangover disguise. The literal glare he is under all day is an optometry nightmare.
Canelo doesn’t smile often or get animated during interviews. The only time he shows some emotion is when he talks about golf (man, Canelo Alvarez loves golf). The rest of the time, he is all business hyping the fight, which, whether you realize it yet or not, is going to be a major moment in any sports fan’s life come Sept. 13 on Netflix. It’s the first Zuffa Boxing event, promoted by Dana White, as part of the TKO brand. And it features probably the two best, most significant fighters of the post-Mayweather era. For die-hard fans who have gray hairs or no hair at all because of how often the best boxers have circled each other and never actually fought over the past 25 years, this is Propecia.
“This is so huge for boxing,” Canelo says. “I’m glad to be involved with these kinds of fights that so many people can see. Everybody has Netflix.”
Half an hour later, in a room 20 feet away, Crawford is even more subdued, doing the same gauntlet of interviews. And they both still have to do the news conference later that afternoon. It’s hard to blame the fighters for not cracking jokes and dancing for the cameras. The whole group was in Saudi Arabia 48 hours earlier, then flew to NYC for this event at Fanatics Fest, then they’re all off to Las Vegas for the final stop on Friday.
This is all business for them, and based on a certain recent photo, that’s how fans want it.
– Turki Alalshikh (@turki_alshikh) June 19, 2025
THE PICTURE is making people very grumpy.
Turki Alalshikh, the man most responsible for making this fight happen, posted a photo on X last Friday that showed him at the head of a dinner table with Crawford and Alvarez sitting across from one another. Alalshikh, chairman of the General Entertainment Authority and president of Saudi Arabia boxing, had summoned them to a dinner of Middle Eastern cuisine to celebrate the kickoff of their hype tour.
When that photo circulated Friday night into Saturday, fight fans did not like it. They complained that Crawford and Canelo looked too chummy eating across a table from one another.
Combat sports fans can be so silly when it comes to how fighters should promote, compete and then move on afterward. In the run-up to a fight, boxers are supposed to despise each other. Stare-downs are mandatory, and the looks should kill. On fight night, the combatants should barely be able to contain themselves before the violence begins. The fight should then be a constant display of fireworks, and blood is always welcome. When the fight is over, the fighters should come together and shake hands, perhaps even hug once or twice. They ought to be sure to show respect to the entire team of the opposing fighter.
Dinner before a big fight? Outrageous.
But that’s a pretty unfair reaction. NFL players try to de-cleat their old college buddies for three hours on Sundays, then exchange jerseys afterward. A bitter NHL playoff series always ends with a handshake line and congratulations. Both of these elite fighters, Canelo and Crawford, probably deserve the benefit of the doubt that they will be able to sit across a dinner table and then try to beat the living daylights out of each other two months later.
However, both fighters also said that having dinner together was a little awkward. They once had dinner many years — and weight classes — ago. Crawford was once the undisputed 135-pound champ, and now he’s moving up two more weight classes from 154 to 168 to take on Alvarez. So at their first dinner, they seemed like two superstar ships that would always pass each other in the night.
Yet, here we are. On Sunday, both fighters say they’ve never had dinner with an opponent before, and they won’t be doing it again anytime soon. Crawford had already eaten before he got to the dinner, so he spent the hour or so nibbling on food just to be polite. Canelo didn’t eat much, either, and admitted he spent the entire time thinking about punching Crawford in the face sometime soon. “I don’t really like this kind of thing,” he tells me. “I don’t like to be involved with my opponents. But let me tell you something: I saw him and I really want to punish him. I was thinking, I am going to f— this guy up.”
Alvarez has his sunglasses on when he says this. But somehow, it still seemed like you could tell that he has bad intentions planned for Sept. 13.
THE NEWS CONFERENCE opens an hour later with Michael Buffer on stage. He’s 80 years old now but still looks quite regal and Buffery. Fans drown him out a few times, but when he launches into the start of his, “Are you ready?” spiel leading up to, “Let’s get ready to rumble,” he still seems to be hitting 93 mph on the radar gun.
The crowd is rowdy for the entire 30-minute news conference. Crawford has a vocal minority within the audience. But this is a Canelo crowd, as most are in boxing. Canelo is 34 now and had his pro boxing debut two years before the iPhone was invented. He has been body-shotting the breath out of main event boxers since about 2010. That’s how he’s earned somewhere north of $500 million as a professional boxer and can afford a Godfather watch. He has earned his money, and his masses, too.
Crawford comes out first. He mostly gets jeers, but some cheers sneak through the noise. He is an equally remarkable athlete, having dispatched all 41 boxers he has ever faced. And he’s one of those fighters whose undefeated record still seems like an underestimation of his brilliance. On the very, very few occasions when he has ever been hit hard, there’s a tendency to immediately think he must have slipped or gotten distracted by something. He rarely seems hurtable.
Canelo comes out a minute later, and the sunglasses are still on as he sits down. Buffer’s introduction gets completely swallowed up by the cheers. The intros are clearly a 10-8 round for Canelo.
Crawford wins the news conference, though. He doesn’t say much, but his words land, a little like how he tends to pick his spots in the ring, too. At one point, Alvarez asks Alalshikh to make the ring smaller for this fight so that Crawford can’t run away. Crawford immediately fires back, “The only running I’m going to do is upside his head. And he has a big head, too.”
White and the fighters take questions for about 15 minutes, then the news conference concludes with an announcement that there will be a faceoff. White stands in the middle of the stage — he’s the preeminent fighter-separator in combat sports history. He looks sturdier than ever in a Canelo vs. Crawford T-shirt. He deserves a black belt for his hard-earned ability to hold up his hands in a “the fish that I caught was this big” position that keeps fighters close enough to be in the same picture but far enough apart to make sure a brawl doesn’t happen for free a month before the actual fight.
The tables are cleared out as fast as possible, and the fighters walk off opposite sides of the stage. These stare-downs will happen several more times over the next six weeks, so there is a pro wrestling feel to the repeated theatrics of them. Canelo and Crawford just sat calmly 20 feet away from each other for 30 minutes. Now, they’re supposed to walk off the stage, then march back across and chest up with rage in their eyes. Perhaps this will appease the people who are very mad about them eating dinner together.
The fighters stride to the middle, and White gets wedged in between. But Crawford blows past White and into Canelo’s space. For the first time all day, Canelo’s shades aren’t on his face. The two fighters jaw for about five seconds, and then Canelo gives Crawford a solid push. Crawford comes flying back toward him, and White tries to keep some distance between the two fighters. White gets a legit “uh-oh” look on his face during the tussle, though most observers thought the whole thing looked like a WWE scuffle designed to sell a fight. Maybe that’s right, but in the room, the heat felt real.
The two fighters separate and then come back together again for a second take. This one lasts a good 20 seconds or so total, and White eventually relaxes his arms a bit in the middle. He holds up the Ring Magazine belt that the company says cost $188,000 to make, but Crawford and Canelo never take their eyes off each other.
Alvarez is still during the photo op. His left hand is at his side, and his right hand is slightly higher and balled up, coiled for a full send if necessary. His sunglasses are off, and so are future dinner plans.
