Canelo Alvarez is moving up in weight for his next fight.
The current WBA "super" and WBC middleweight champion, fresh off his majority decision victory over Gennady Golovkin on September 15, is going to fight WBA "regular" super middleweight champion Rocky Fielding on December 15 at Madison Square Garden. Alvarez made the announcement on Twitter.
The news come as a surprise as Alvarez had just won the middleweight titles and some had expected Alvarez to defend his titles against former middleweight champion David Lemieux. Lemieux won a title eliminator in September to become the mandatory challenger for the WBA title. It was recently announced by the WBC that Alvarez would have been eligible to make a voluntary WBC title defense while interim champion Jermall Charlo was ordered to fight Golovkin in a title eliminator.
Fielding has been riding a massive wave of momentum since getting stopped by Callum Smith in late 2015. In the span of 15 months, Fielding won the British and Commonwealth super middleweight titles, putting him in position to challenge for a world title. Fielding then scored a TKO victory in the fifth round over Tyron Zeuge to win the WBA title this past July.
Alvarez has only fought above 160 pounds just once in his career, which was against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in May 2017. Alvarez has already won titles at junior middleweight and middleweight and will be attempting to win a title in a third weight class. No announcement as to what platform will broadcast the fight in the United States has been made.
