Paul: Canelo ducking a lot of people, fighting relative unknowns

Ahead of this weekend’s big fight for women’s boxing, when Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano collide, MVP promoter Jake Paul took some time to talk to Fight Hub TV about his thoughts on some potential fights out there for him, and even touched on Canelo Alvarez’s next scheduled fight against Dmitry Bivol.

This gets a little interesting because there was a bit of a social media dust-up in the past couple of days when Canelo was criticized by the manager of UFC champion Kamaru Usman, who claimed Canelo is ducking good fights by taking on Bivol.

Now it’s obviously ridiculous to conflate Bivol’s boxing ability with his social media following, but as far as stirring up the pot this tweet even managed to get the attention of Canelo himself. And perhaps just as fittingly, social media star Jake Paul agrees with the premise of Canelo ducking the best opponents out there for him.

“I think Kamaru Usman’s manager is right in a sense,” Paul says. “Even though he’s a rat, we all know he’s a little scumbag criminal, liar, got kicked out of a country — so I think his manager’s a piece of shit, don’t get me wrong — but I think he’s right in the sense that Canelo is ducking a lot of people. You know, fight Benavidez, fight Charlo, why aren’t those fights happening? And, you know, he’s not fighting any really big names. These guys are relatively unheard of.

“And that’s why I want to get my hands on Canelo as well. I think that would be a massive, massive pay-per-view, massive, massive entertainment spectacle.”

I suspect that most reading this wouldn’t give much credence to the idea of Canelo ducking, particularly with this fight, but apparently this is an actual narrative being floated around. Is it possible that a fight against Bivol can be construed as duck of David Benavidez or Jermall Charlo? I’m skeptical, but let’s discuss below.