Álvarez and Crawford face off in breathless blockbuster destined to break records | Boxing

LAs Vegas organized its share of Nights Blockbuster, but nothing on the scale of what happens this weekend. Saturday evening at the Allegiant Stadium, the house of $ 2 billion (1.47 billion pounds sterling) of the NFL raiders, Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez will defend its undeniable super-glass crown against Terence Crawford in front of more than 70,000 spectators, by far the largest crowd of boxing that the city has ever known.

Millions of others will look on Netflix, which carries the card at no additional cost for subscribers – a first for a fight of this magnitude and a reminder of the way in which the boxing company is redone in real time. For decades, sport depended on payment by vision. Now, it is bets that the range and the spectacle can replace a buckling model. Timing is not an accident: the weekend of the day of Mexican independence, when this metropolis enlightened in neon in the Mojave desert becomes a second house for Álvarez and his supporters draped in the flag.

However, for a main event of this quality and consequences, the atmosphere around the city during the fight week was strangely calm. The last press conference on Thursday at T-Mobile Arena was open to the public but attracted a little over a thousand fans. We expect the crowd to arrive en masse on Friday and the live door will finally be enticing, but ticket sales were soft, which prompted the whispers of the Trump crisis which affected local tourism. The more likely theory is that if most of the most recent super -boxes in boxing have required years of struggle – Mayweather C Pacquiao, Álvarez against Golovkin, Crawford V Spence – This was practically materialized overnight. A year ago, Álvarez V Crawford was more a bar fancy flight than the plausible match given the weight of the Gulf. Now suddenly here it is.

Álvarez, 35, is the emperor at 168 pounds: Granite-Chinned, a four-weight champion from 154 to 175, the most banrable name in boxing. Crawford, 37, is the best fighter in America since Floyd Mayweather Jr, a champion of four divisions extending over 135 to 154 who spent more than a decade for elite opponents to appear ordinary. The Nebraskan who strikes the switch is the calm craftsman who unified 140, then 147 with a dismantling of Errol Spence JR so complete that it looked like a gap. That it comes from an outpost of fiscs better known for the production of corn that elite prices lend only to the tradition.

This weekend also acts as an inaugural promotion of Zuffa Boxing under TKO Holdings, the company formed by the merger of the parent group of the UFC and WWE. This is the first boxing show promoted by Dana White, supported by a large Turki al-Sheikh investment, and considered to be the burst of opening in order to build a rival system for ranking and titles under Saudi control. Behind the scenes, this project is already collided with Washington’s policy. A new law on the renewal of US boxing of Muhammad Ali was introduced to Congress, according to criticism of the legislation, could empty longtime protections for combatants and manual promoters of the power to control the titles. The fact that a potential hostile control can be hidden for the way she did it during the equivalent of the Super Bowl of Boxing Week testifies to the attraction of the main event. When a journalist raised valid questions on the subject during the press conference on Thursday, White skillfully adorned before going to Hominem.

The dimensions have looked at Álvarez. He campaigned at 168LB or more for almost seven years, his chin experienced by heavier men. Crawford spent most of his career at 147 or less, with only a brief recognition at 154. The size counts, just like age. However, the intrigue lies in the record for Crawford problem solving. Most times, he passed the first rounds to download the pace of an opponent before turning geometry in the middle of the fight. Against Spence there are two summers, Crawford produced a masterclass: three kicks and a ninth round stop. In particular, the chances against him have shortened materially since the announcement of the fight in June.

For Álvarez, victory is the inherited interview. He has already assembled titles in four weight categories, stages in titles in two countries and was confirmed as the largest star in sport and one of the most recognizable faces in Mexico. Beating Crawford would add another ball to the curriculum vitae and reaffirm his supremacy at 168 years old. For Crawford, it is an inherited transformation. He is already the first man in the four-centimeter era to become undisputed champion in two divisions, a feat since equaled by Naoya Inoue and Oleksandr Usyk. A third, against Álvarez, on the world platform of Netflix and before the largest crowd in Las Vegas history, would jump from generational talent in the field of all time lion weight solutions like Harry Greb, Henry Armstrong, Roberto Durán and Manny Pacquiao.

Everything in this fight is oversized and breathless: the place, the issues and the television public. What is happening inside the strings on Saturday evening, however, will come down to the smallest of margins: timing, angles, choice made in the blur of three minutes. It is in this public accounting where boxing, for all its bloating, always finds its purity.