Wednesday, May 1

If Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia proved the biggest fight of 2023, then on Wednesday of fight week, Saul Alvarez-Jaime Munguia is starting to feel bigger.

BoxingScene was in Las Vegas to cover Davis-Garcia and its build-up and therefore monitored how it evolved but, partly on account of Davis’ refusal to honor his media obligations, what unfolded was a steadier build.

Little over one year on, on Wednesday the media centre at the MGM Grand was, by contrast, full as a consequence of the many in Sin City to cover the world’s highest-profile fighter’s latest fight. That there were also supporters of both fighters present also created the look and feel of a Vegas fight week on the eve of the fight.

None of which is to suggest that it will in any way surpass, at least in a commercial context, Davis-Garcia, which not only outperformed the fight between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence to be the biggest of 2023, but generated one of the biggest gates in Nevada’s perhaps unrivalled history. It is perhaps also significant that so many of the media and supporters present are Mexican; there is no guarantee that their influence will contribute towards making Saturday’s a particularly big Alvarez fight.

On Wednesday the animosity between the undisputed super-middleweight champion and his former promoter Oscar De La Hoya, who remains Munguia’s co-promoter, overshadowed the match-up between Alvarez and Munguia. De La Hoya has long struggled to resist criticising those he dislikes but there long appears to have been a special place in his thoughts for Alvarez, who has succeeded him not only as the world’s leading fighter, but in so regularly fighting on Cinco de Mayo weekend. De La Hoya and Alvarez have had a strained relationship since Alvarez left Golden Boy Promotions for Matchroom, whose figurehead Eddie Hearn is another De La Hoya transparently dislikes. 

Rivalries sell, but the ill-feeling between De La Hoya and Alvarez is similar to that that existed between Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin, and that between De La Hoya, and Fernando Vargas, Ricardo Mayorga and Floyd Mayweather, when he was in similar territory to that Alvarez occupies in 2024. It wasn’t that long ago that De La Hoya and Garcia, his leading fighter, were taking aim at each other, but De La Hoya rarely presented as someone who disliked Garcia like he does Alvarez, whose attention he finally truly drew when, from the top table, De La Hoya swore.

Alvarez was wearing sunglasses in the MGM Grand’s poorly lit ballroom – one that doesn’t have any natural sunlight – and remained expressionless while De La Hoya spoke, until De La Hoya briefly looked at the champion, sat immediately to his right, and said “put some fucking respect on [my name]”. When he did so Alvarez immediately looked in his direction, his body language changed, and he eventually followed De La Hoya across the stage where he was stopped by the fight’s co-promoter Tom Brown. De La Hoya, whether he had intended to or not, had engaged the fighter in “Canelo” Alvarez. Before Alvarez fought and defeated Caleb Plant in 2021, he punched Plant at one of their face-offs. De La Hoya hadn’t simply been attempting to promote Saturday’s fight; the occasion is even more personal than was perhaps anticipated, and risked becoming considerably worse.

Reports of Garcia testing positive for performance enhancing drugs on the day of and the day before his fight with Devin Haney were therefore the last thing the promoter and his promotional organisation needed. Golden Boy swiftly and professionally issued a statement to address those reports; Garcia’s victory over Haney had been on course to remain one of the stories of 2024; three days before the biggest fight of Munguia’s career, the challenger’s and Garcia’s promoters will struggle to prevent Garcia remaining the story of the week.