Canelo on Cinco

AT THE time of writing, Billy Joe Saunders is close to agreeing terms to fight Mexican legend Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on May 2 in Las Vegas, thus continuing Canelo’s now annual ritual of fighting on the weekend of the most important national holiday in the Mexican calendar, Cinco de Mayo. 

While officially this annual holiday marks Mexico’s victory over the French empire at the Battle of Puebla on May 5 1862, in more recent times it has come to be increasingly associated with the battles being fought by the country’s red-haired ring phenomenon. Indeed Canelo is a fighter who’s attained the status of national institution in a country the benighted condition of which calls to mind the sage words of Bertolt Brecht: “Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.”

In this respect he joins and stands on the shoulders of an exalted group of fighters from Latin and Central America — countries located south of the US border and cursed by grinding poverty and societal dislocation in consequence. As with Canelo today, these were men who entered the ring as one of the few sources of national pride.