Perfect Matchmaking, Flawless Fight Show Why Canelo Alvarez Is a Superstar

Four days after the announcement of the "Fight of the Century," another bout was quietly announced via press release. There was no worldwide media coverage. ESPN didn't break into its programming to trumpet the fight. Canelo Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KO) vs. James Kirkland, for all the attention it got, may as well have not existed.

But, while it seemed reckless to book a bout just a week after the biggest fight in modern boxing history, it turns out there was some method to Golden Boy Promotions' madness. While this fight was cheated the buildup and press coverage it deserved, it was about something bigger than just a fleeting television number—it was an opportunity to establish boxing's next big thing as the anti-Mayweather.

Mayweather fights, for all their performance-art quality and circus-tent atmosphere, barely qualify as "fights." They are displays of athletic excellence, surely, but it's an excellence grounded in not being hit, in avoidance, in negation. The visceral part of us, the part that attracts us to boxing in the first place, is never going to be fully sated by a Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight. 

Canelo, of course, is a different type of animal. He comes to fight. In the wake of the superfight that wasn't so super, we needed that as a boxing fandom—we needed that reminder of the primal force boxing can be in our lives, when fighters are willing to step in the ring and risk it all. 

That's what makes boxing so unlike anything else in the sports world. The courage on display is almost epic, at every level up and down a fight card. These men are willing to strip to the waist and risk great harm to themselves both mentally and physically.

There's an intimacy to the process that exists nowhere else in athletics. The fighters who step into the ring are more than just professionals who are collecting a check—or at least they should be. The paycheck is paramount, of course. But in a perfect world, it follows revealing your true self to the world. It follows the exchange of grievances and the opportunity of establishing your will over that of another's. 

Money might be the motivation. But it isn't the point.

If it was Golden Boy matchmaker Eric Gomez's intent to underscore the differences between Canelo and Mayweather, well, this was genius-level matchmaking. Kirkland, a well-established name with a reputation for mayhem, was sure to provide Alvarez a stern test. No, he might not truly be on the same level as Canelo, but he wouldn't know it or care.

Fighter	Punches Landed	Punches Thrown	Percentage
Canelo	87	150	58%
Kirkland	42	197	21%

This was never designed as an athletic competition. It was always going to be a fight. A week after Mayweather's dud of a performance, which was tone-deaf to what fans needed in every way, Canelo vs. Kirkland offered boxing its own rebuttal to the legion of critics suggesting it couldn't be relevant again.

And, as it should, the sport made its case in the ring.

That is where Canelo and Kirkland met in the middle, fists flying with a fury that seemed to suggest both men knew this wasn't going to be a long night. Kirkland was in trouble early and never really recovered. Canelo was a man with a point to prove, as every punch was another particularly brutal rhetorical device with a single message—Boxing. Isn't. Dead. Yet. 

By the time he landed an overhand right that permanently grounded his brave opponent, he clearly made his point.

Bob Levey/Associated Press

"Canelo vs. Kirkland on May 9 was the real Cinco de Mayo weekend fight that fans wanted," Oscar De La Hoya, Founder and President of Golden Boy Promotions told the press after the fight. "We promised them a war, we promised them action, and that is exactly what they got with this fight." 

The fight further solidified, as ESPN.com's Dan Rafael explains, Canelo's status as boxing's king-in-waiting. Even before this bout, he was already well down the path of superstardom:

"

For Alvarez, the fight further stamped him as one of boxing biggest stars. He drew a crowd of about 40,000 to the Alamodome for his unification victory against Austin Trout in 2013, and although he lost a unification bout to Mayweather later in the year, the fight was the highest-grossing bout in boxing history—until Mayweather-Pacquiao broke that record May 2—and generated the second-most pay-per-view buys.

"

What's next for Canelo is unclear. Miguel Cotto looms large at middleweight, if he can win his fight in June against Daniel Geale. While there is noise about that fight finally happening, it is far from a sure thing.

Mayweather, for one thing, may come calling either man. And then there's Gennady Golovkin, the middleweight dynamo who will make his own case for a boxing megafight next week when he faces his own Kirkland, Boxcino champion Willie Monroe Jr. 

What is clear, or should be after a bravura performance, is that there is much more to boxing than Mayweather, a man whose collection of luxury cars outnumbers his truly memorable moments in the ring at least two-to-one. There are still fighters who pursue truth and meaning with a prizefight as their proxy.

And at the top of that list stands Canelo Alvarez.