By Ricardo Lezama 
As the government of Saudi Arabia continues to aggressively market its capital city, Riyadh, via the ‘Riyadh Season’ monicker, other interests begin to conflict, perhaps, inadvertently, with the goal of staging high profile fights branded as most prestigiously as possible. Not everyone is as swayed by Saudi Arabia’s deep pockets, most notably, Canelo Alvarez and the IBF.
Canelo vs Crawford Is ‘Undisputed vs Undisputed’ But IBF Has Other Plans
At the time of this writing, the IBF has ordered Canelo face a mandatory William Scull, the IBF’s number one contender, in order to maintain his IBF super middleweight status. This, in effect, is forcing Canelo to face this challenger or risk losing his status as undisputed. For the IBF, their last 168lb champion was Caleb Plant, who Canelo knocked out in November 2021.
Scull (22-0) who is undefeated and the number one contender is a relative unknown. However, the Cuban born contender is relatively well schooled and could the typical amateur style that Canelo tends to struggle with. In most people’s eyes, the fight would be a lose-lose since Scull’s relatively low audience would make him unknown to Canelo fans and the lack of notoriety would discredit his obvious skill.
Additionally, Riyadh Season’s biggest advocate, Turki Alalshik, has plans for a Canelo Alvarez vs Terrence Crawford bout. At some level, even if he vacated the belts, Canelo would enter as the popularly recognized undisputed champion at 168lbs. In a sense, only Crawford stands to gain from a victory while fighting for the same belts as the undisputed welterweight champion.
Therefore, from the perspective of Riyahd Season, the more appetizing scenario is for Canelo to maintain his status as the official undisputed champion in order for the fight to be politically relevant for the boxing world.
Crawford has already been stripped of his IBF belts which would not be available for contention for Alvarez anyways. Crawford’s vacated IBF belt now belongs to Jaron Ennis, but he is a relative unknown as well that some hardcore boxing fans are calling for Crawford to face.