Mauricio Sulaiman, president of the World Boxing Council (WBC), acknowledged in an interview that the entity he presides over will review and improve the mandatory challenger system.

There has been an enormous amount of backlash over last Saturday's fight between WBC, WBA super middleweight champion Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez and challenger Avni Yildirim.

The contest was a complete mismatch, with Canelo beating down Yildirim for a three round stoppage.

Canelo had no choice in going forward with the fight, because Yildirim - inactive for two years and coming off a loss - was the mandatory challenger to the WBC title.

Yildirim became the mandatory challenger by default, when a rematch with Anthony Dirrell, which was ordered as a final eliminator, never took place.

Sulaiman explains that the coronavirus pandemic forced the hand of the WBC, because it created a situation where they had to order a mandatory fight. 

"The mandatory challenger rule is one that has worked through the years to bring justice to the sport and for mandatory challengers to have a title shot," Sulaiman told ESPN Deportes.

"This rule has not been revised in many, many years and there are times when the regulations limit you in legal matters, because the official challenger receives rights. So when there are situations, that for some reason intervene in this mandatory procedure, we should have a review and update the process.

"In this case [with Yildirim] there was a situation that drastically changed, which was the inactivity generated by the pandemic and the effects of the pandemic itself. So we ended up ordering a fight with the official challenger, so that his rights were respected.

"In this case, two years passed and it was not anyone's fault, it was not the fault of Yildirim or the sanctioning body, but because of a pandemic. Before the pandemic he was going to fight and they canceled the fight, these are the things that happened. We must have a recourse not to be totally backed against the wall by a regulation, when extraordinary things happen."