Zero Hype in Riyadh: Canelo Alvarez vs. William Scull PPV Struggles to Capture Fan Interest

The poorly promoted fight between Canelo Alvarez and William Scull is happening this Saturday, May 3rd, and there’s zero buzz about it for their event on DAZN PPV at The Venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Marketing Fail

There has been little effort by the promoters to build interest among fans for this bout, which is priced at $59.99 on pay-per-view. Fans don’t know who IBF super middleweight champion Scull (23-0,9 KOs) is because he’s never beaten any notable opposition during his career.

The way the Cuban Scull, 32, won his belt with a controversial 12-round decision last October against Vladimir Shishkin makes the hardcore boxing fans view him as a fake belt-holder.

Scull’s Last Six Opponents

– Vladimir Shishkin
– Sean Hemphill
– Cristian Fabian Rios
– Abel Nicolas Adriel
– Evgeny Shvedenko
– Deneb Diaz

For Canelo, 34, this fight is to enable him to recapture his IBF 168-lb title that he relinquished so that he could take an easy money fight against the former #1 WBA-ranked Edgar Berlanga on November 14th last year. Rather than defend against his IBF-ordered mandatory Scull, Canelo vacated so he could take on Berlanga in a mismatch.

Artifice of Undisputed

The problem is with the four-belt system. It makes it necessary for Canelo to take a time-wasting fight against Scull to recapture his IBF title in another lackluster fight. This is all for artifice so Alvarez can be the undisputed 168-lb champion when he faces Terence Crawford in October in Turki Alalshikh’s “big fight” in Las Vegas.

Part of the marketing of the Canelo-Crawford fight will center on whether Crawford can capture his third undisputed divisional championship. It’s all to create more interest in the circus fight between Alvarez and Bud, who is coming up from 154 to challenge him without any experience at 168. It’s completely unfair to the contenders at super middleweight.

Alvarez is a 30-to-1 favorite against Scull, showing this fight is not expected to be even remotely competitive. For the fans who saw Scull’s last fight against Vladimir Shishkin, it’s not surprising that Canelo is a huge favorite. Scull looked terrible.

What the promotion needs is for Crawford to come out of the woodwork this week and start talking up his fight with Canelo to get fans looking forward to their fight in October. If Bud Crawford can get people anticipating that contest, they’ll be more motivated to focus on Saturday’s clash against Scull.

I doubt Crawford will surface to help out because he’s not into promoting fights, which is one of the reasons he’s failed to become popular. He’s just lucky that Turki likes him. If not for that, Crawford would be toiling away still at 154, dealing with the young sharks like Bakhram Murtazaliev and Vergil Ortiz Jr.