THE impact of Covid on boxing is now starting to be felt, most prominently at the very apex rather than in the basement of the sport with the news that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez has launched legal proceedings against his promoter Golden Boy Promotions, headed up by Oscar De La Hoya, and his US broadcaster Dazn (Da Zone), for breach of the $365 million (£283.2m) 11-fight contract he signed in October 2018.

The lineal middleweight and four-weight world champion has been inactive since November 2019, when he went up two weights to defeat Sergey Kovalev and bag himself the WBO light heavyweight title, which he subsequently vacated, to go along with WBA and Ring Magazine middleweight belts. 

Prior to Covid the Mexican was scheduled to fight Britain’s WBO super middleweight champ Billy Joe Saunders in June in Las Vegas, but first the initial scheduled date in June was postponed in the midst of the pandemic and then the fight itself cancelled when Golden Boy and Da Zone tried to cut Saunders’s fee, citing Covid, in advance of a rescheduled date in September. There was also talk, albeit briefly, of Canelo possibly facing Liverpool’s WBA super middleweight champion Callum Smith as an alternative to Saunders, but here again things have stalled.