The WBC is making a special belt for Canelo Alvarez's next fight-- Again. And Canelo Alvarez has no interest in accepting it should he win-- Again.
Back in late April, the Mexico City-based sanctioning body announced that they had manufactured a special belt to be awarded to Mexican boxers fighting around the Cinco de Mayo or September 16 (Mexican Independence Day) holidays. The idea was to present the belt to the winner of the Alvarez-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. clash on May 6.
According to publicity issued by the sanctioning body, the belt was crafted by an artist from the indigenous Huichol people, native to the states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Zacatecas and Durango. Taking over 300 hours of labor to manufacture, the belt was adorned with more than 40,000 crystal pieces and decorated with Huichol-style artwork.
It really was a beautiful title belt. But, again, Canelo didn't want it.
"It's not that I lack respect and don't want the belt," Alvarez pointed out at the time, also noting that he would be wearing Huichol-crafted attire for the Chavez fight. "I just don't want anything to do with the WBCÂ…The WBC made the belt knowing I would reject it. They want to make me look like the bad guy. I respect the Huichol people. I fought many fights in Nayarit."
The animosity between Canelo and the WBC is real, and it dates back to the organization's aggressive and public push to book a bout between Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin.
With Alvarez holding the WBC middleweight title that he won from Miguel Cotto, the sanctioning body issued an order to the champ after a successful optional defense against Amir Khan in May of 2016-negotiate a title defense against Golovkin within 15 days or vacate the title.
Alvarez balked at the order to negotiate, which came right when he was set to go to court in a lawsuit battle with a former promoter. He reportedly felt backed into a corner by the WBC after they refused a plea to extend the negotiations deadline until after his court case was resolved. Instead of bending to the will of the organization- an organization which had, by the way, bent over backwards to accommodate Alvarez in his initial rise to fame and world champ status-he simply handed the belt back to them.
From that point forward, Canelo has wanted nothing to do with the WBC, asserting that the WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman had publicly established a narrative designed to make him look bad in the eyes of the public.
"I won that belt with blood, sweat, sacrifice, a great training camp, by beating Miguel Angel Cotto," Alvarez told the Los Angeles Times. "When I vacated it, they gave it to the other guy like that, without making him drop a bead of sweat. He didn't even go through a single training camp and they gave it to him. They put it on the table. That's not an organization you can respect."
Alvarez has also asserted his belief that the WBC's native-crafted Huichol belt is merely part of a strong arm tactic to wedge themselves back into his career.
"From the very beginning, the WBC wanted to get involved with this [Chavez] fight, and when we as a team said 'no,' - we knew that at some point something was going to come up," Alvarez said. "We spoke to Mr. Sulaiman and told him that he was not going to be involved. He then came up with this Huichol belt and I knew that he was going to use that against me in a negative way, to make me look like the bad guy - that I want nothing to do with the Huichols."
In Alvarez's estimation, the handmade belt was created to force him into accepting the WBC back into his career and avoid the bad publicity of being the Mexican star "rejecting" a belt "made by Mexicans."
Noting that the belt also had the corporate logo of Mexico's interjet Airlines as well as the logo of the Mexican Board of Tourism, Alvarez has implied that the WBC has a vested, financial interest in having him accept the honorary title, above and beyond the 3% fee involved in sanctioning his world title bouts.
"There is a company there on the belt. [The belt has] been going through a tour, conferences, exhibits at the hotels."
Following Alvarez's win over Chavez Jr., the not-received Huichol belt was to be auctioned off by the WBC with the benefits going to a Nayarit charity. However, a change in plans had it donated to a Mexico City sports museum, instead.
And now the WBC has a new Huichol belt ready for Alvarez's September 16 clash with Gennady Golovkin. And, once again, Alvarez has stated his desire to have nothing to do with it. This time, though, the organization will have an involvement in Canelo's fight since Golovkin is their recognized middleweight champ. But if Alvarez should emerge victorious, it's almost a sure thing that he'll hand the belt right back to Sulaiman and the WBC.
The idea of yet another rejection and subsequent blockade from a very lucrative relationship with the Mexican star is clearly on the mind of a somewhat spiteful-sounding WBC president.
"The winner will be the WBC champion," Sulaiman recently told the media, "but if either of the two wishes to renounce the title or not accept it, that is a decision that we do not makeÂ…[but] it would be recommended that [Alvarez] concentrate on his own thing, which is training for the biggest fight of his life, instead of telling the WBC what to do with their belts."