Alvarez to step up in weight to take on Fielding
>> LOS ANGELES: Canelo Alvarez will follow up his middleweight world title win over Gennady Golovkin by taking on Britain’s World Boxing Association super-middleweight champ Rocky Fielding in New York in December.
“I’m very excited to announce my next fight,” Mexico’s Alvarez tweeted on Friday, revealing the bout will be held at Madison Square Garden. “Next December 15th at the New York MSG. Taking on a big challenge. I will fight for the world title at 168 pounds versus Rocky Fielding, the current WBA champion!”
Alvarez ended Golovkin’s unbeaten reign as unified middleweight champion with a majority decision in Las Vegas on Sept 15, seizing the World Boxing Council and WBA middleweight belts.
Fielding, 31, became the WBA’s “regular” world champion in the super middleweight division in July with a knockout victory over Tyron Zeuge — although the WBA recognises fellow Briton Callum Smith as the “super” champion in the division after Smith’s knockout of George Groves in Saudi Arabia last month.
Meanwhile, Anthony Joshua’s representatives have made a “muchimproved” offer for a world heavyweight title unification fight against WBC champion Deontay Wilder but so far the overtures have been rebuffed, promoter Eddie Hearn said.
The 28-year-old Joshua, who holds the WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO crowns, stopped Russian Alexander Povetkin at Wembley Stadium last month and is locked in to stage his next bout at the same venue in April next year.
Wilder, who is scheduled to fight Tyson Fury in Los Angeles on Dec 1, labelled Joshua a “coward” at a news conference on Monday for failing to secure a bout between them.
“We keep requesting these meetings and they don’t want them to take place, which is a bit strange when you’re talking about the biggest fight in world boxing,” Hearn told Sky Sports. “We wrote to [Wilder’s camp] after our fight with Povetkin and said we need to make our move soon because of mandatories in place for April 13, so could we have a meeting.
“They got back and said no, we’re not interested in meeting you, make us an offer and we’ll let you know.
“We went back and made a muchimproved offer from the first one — this one with a percentage split — a very attractive offer and then requested a meeting, but they turned round and said ‘no, we won’t meet you’.”