![]() ![]() His parents separated just before his professional debut but Canelo still lived with his mum, Ana Maria, in a tiny concrete house. “Chepo” Reynoso said: “I wanted to be something softer, nicer, because he was being called such harsh things.” He was soon celebrated across Mexico as “Canelo” – his nickname alluding to his cinnamon colouring. For me it was a great fight because it started everything.” I never believe what fame tells me. I did well and they stopped it in the fourth round because my opponent had a cut over his eye. “I remember it very clearly,” Álvarez says. He faced an 18-year-old Mexican called Abraham Gonzalez, who had fought once before. The Reynosos knew they had to let him loose and, on 29 October 2005, just three months after he turned 15, Álvarez climbed into the professional ring for the first time. There was no holding back his prodigious talent as he stormed through the tough Mexican amateur ranks. He eventually followed his brothers into boxing at the Guadalajara gym run by “Chepo” Reynoso, and his son Eddy, who is still Álvarez’s trainer. Álvarez was the youngest of eight children, seven of whom were boys, and he never shied away from a street fight after then. Photograph: Ed Mulholland/Matchroom Handout/EPA Saúl ‘Canelo’ Álvarez lands a punch against Avni Yildirim of Turkey during their fight in Miami in February. He stunned everyone when he let his fists fly and he soon made blood spurt from a bigger bully’s nose. Outside his family house in Juanacatlán he was ridiculed again about his freckles and hair colour. The teasing and the pinching was too much for him to bear and, at the age of 11, he fought back. But, nearly 20 years on, Álvarez says he has not forgotten how life changed when, finally, he could take it no longer. When he was 10 his eldest brother, Rigoberto, urged him to use his fists to shut down the bullies but it took time for him to find the courage. He was meant to sell paletas, or ice pops, but sometimes there was so much taunting that the frozen goods melted into a sad pool of coloured water. There was always this sense of feeling something was off in my life.” They would also pinch me when I came to them and tried to walk past. I could see how they looked at me and what they said because I was different to them. “I was quiet but it wasn’t necessarily a sense of being timid when I got on to the buses. “My dad wanted me to sell ice-creams on the buses,” Álvarez says in Spanish. He looked Irish rather than Mexican and he was teased mercilessly when, at the age of six, he was sent by his father, Santos, to sell ice-creams at the bus station in downtown Guadalajara. Álvarez is the WBA and WBC title-holder and, after Saunders, his next objective is to become one of boxing’s rare unified champions by winning the IBF belt against Caleb Plant in September.īefore Álvarez assesses the challenge of the unpredictable Saunders we revisit his past in the streets of Juanacatlán, just over 20 miles from the teeming city of Guadalajara, when Álvarez was a small and shy boy bullied because he had red hair, freckles and pale skin. ![]() He has won world titles at four weights – from junior-middleweight all the way to light-heavyweight – and on Saturday night, in front of a 70,000 crowd, he aims to take the WBO super-middleweight belt from Britain’s unbeaten Billy Joe Saunders in Arlington, Texas. After 58 fights, and just one defeat against Floyd Mayweather when Álvarez was 23 years old, the Mexican is chasing a new form of domination. ![]()
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