The city has a tangible buzz, a real big-fight weak feel. But this is not a fight born out of fan demand.<\/p>\n
Crawford began at lightweight; Alvarez has climbed as high as light-heavyweight. On paper, it didn’t make sense.<\/p>\n
Barely a year ago, Alvarez laughed off the idea of facing Crawford, saying he was too small, too risky and there was nothing to gain.<\/p>\n
So what changed? The real driver is money, and the power brokers behind it.<\/p>\n
This event marks the first marquee collaboration between Saudi Arabia’s Turki Alalshikh and UFC chief Dana White’s boxing venture.<\/p>\n
Alalshikh wanted Alvarez and Crawford to face each other, and – as he does – he got what he wanted. The cheque-book did the convincing.<\/p>\n
Alvarez will earn a reported purse of $150m (\u00a3111m). It’s the Hollywood treatment he’s come to expect, as he shows off his wealth at every turn – from his absurdly expensive watch collection to his fleet of luxury cars.<\/p>\n
Crawford, long frustrated by smaller purses, will take home at least $10m (\u00a37.4m), with the total pot expected to top $200m. Reported purses are often inflated, but give a taste of the fortunes involved.<\/p>\n
Although Alvarez-Crawford has not been years in the making, special moments are built on special fighters.<\/p>\n
In an era of YouTube celebrities and exhibitions, this is a chance to show that boxing can still produce legitimate, high-stakes drama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city has a tangible buzz, a real big-fight weak feel. But this is not a fight born…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-132289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}