Crawford announced his retirement from the sport as an undefeated, five-weight world champion months later.<\/a> He had been stripped of the WBC belt and vacated the rest.<\/p>\nChristian Mbilli has since been upgraded to full WBC champion after retaining his interim belt against Lester Martinez \u2013 who also fights under trainer Brian \u2018BoMac\u2019 McIntyre with Crawford \u2013 on the Canelo-Crawford undercard.<\/p>\n
When Mbilli was crowned, Crawford stood by his stablemate, insisting Martinez should have been given the nod and is the rightful champion.<\/p>\n
Though Mbilli has said he is open to a rematch with Martinez, he is now the frontrunner to land the Canelo comeback fight.<\/p>\n
Speaking to La Hora del Boxeo, Martinez looked ahead to that match-up and said he will be ready and waiting for the winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cCanelo could win, Mbilli could win. Fighting either of those two would benefit me a lot. We\u2019ll be ready to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
First up is Immanuwel Aleem \u2013 Martinez\u2019s second attempt in a row at the WBC interim belt.<\/a> Should he come through the American tonight in California, topping a Pro Box TV card, he will secure that prime position. Crawford has recently been in camp with the 30-year-old from Guatemala to help him prepare, and will undoubtedly do the same if the Canelo fight is made down the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saul \u2018Canelo\u2019 Alvarez is due to return to the ring in September after losing to Terence Crawford late…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-488163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488163","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=488163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}