Bare-Knuckle Fighter Criticizes Canelo Over Kovalev Fight

A Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship star criticized Canelo for wanting to fight a much heavier opponent Sergey Kovalev.

Mexican boxing superstar Saul “Canelo” Alvarez has been yearning to fight light heavyweight champ Kovalev despite the two-weight class difference. Before Kovalev stopped Anthony Yarde and before Canelo got stripped of his IBF middleweight title, Canelo vs. Kovalev has been making noise in the boxing world.

But even though the match is evidently a highly anticipated bout and could possibly generate insane amount of money, ex-boxing world champ Paulie Malignaggi begged to disagree.

In a recent media scrum, Malignaggi didn’t want to comment about the fight at first but eventually expressed his raw thoughts about Canelo, Boxing News 24 reported.

“What am I going to tell you? If I say something everyone’s going to get mad at me,” Malignaggi said.

Malignaggi didn’t even want to talk about it but he criticized Canelo for stepping up and fight Kovalev, who is currently fighting in a much heavier division.

“The guy [Canelo] was fighting at light middleweight two years ago, and now he’s going to fight at light heavyweight against a guy that punches hard. What do you want me to tell you, bro? I’m basically telling you my thoughts in a round about way. I don’t even want to talk about fights like this. A joke of a sport we’ve become,” Malignaggi exclaimed.

However, Kovalev’s manager Egis Klimas believes that Canelo will do just fine against a bigger opponent. According to Klimas, the Mexican star doesn’t even look like he weighs anywhere lower than 175 pounds, Boxing Scene noted.

“If you put him on the scale right now, I don’t think he’s less than 175. I’m more than sure he’s eating healthy and will be much stronger at 175 than he was at 160 or 168,” Klimas pointed.

Reports claim that Kovalev is “No. 1” on the wish list of Alvarez and his broadcast partner DAZN. The superfight is likely to happen unless something goes drastically wrong, or one side will appear to be lying about wanting to make the fight happen.

When both camps tried to make the fight for September, they ran out of time as Kovalev's mandatory fight against Yarde was going to be too tough to get out of. Alvarez on the other hand, looked at a possible fight with his own mandatory challenger, Sergiy Derevyanchenko. However, after the deal broke down, Alvarez was stripped of his IBF middleweight belt.