Canelo Alvarez will move up two weight classes in order to win another world title this November.
Golden Boy Promotions announced that Alvarez, the WBA middleweight champion, will challenge for Sergey Kovalev’s WBO light heavyweight title on November 2. The fight, set to take place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, will be streamed on DAZN.
Alvarez, who has won titles at junior middleweight, middleweight and a secondary belt at super middleweight, is coming off a win over Daniel Jacobs in May to unify the WBA, WBC and IBF middleweight titles. In the months after Alvarez’s win over Jacobs, he has since then had his IBF title stripped for not reaching a deal to fight mandatory challenger Sergiy Derevyanchenko and then lost his WBC title when he was elevated to WBC Franchise champion, meaning Jermall Charlo would be the sole titlist at 160 pounds for the sanctioning body.
Yet, throughout the summer, Alvarez and his team struggled to secure a fight for a planned event on September 14, which falls on Mexican Independence Day weekend. Fights with the likes of Derevyanchenko and Gennadiy Golovkin fell through, as did an initial attempt to fight Kovalev. It was then announced in July that Alvarez will not fight on September 14, instead electing to further find a fight before the end of 2019. This will be Alvarez’s third fight with DAZN ever since he signed a five-year, nine-figure deal to fight on the streaming service.
While Alvarez waited for his next fight, Kovalev would go on to fight mandatory challenger Anthony Yarde on August 24 in Chelyabinsk, Russia. Kovalev, a three-time WBO light heavyweight champion, retained the title with a 11th-round knockout win over Yarde.
