Canelo Alvarez is aiming to become the undisputed super middleweight world champion by the end of 2021, and his hit list includes Billy Joe Saunders and Caleb Plant.

Canelo, who won the WBA ‘Super’, WBC and Ring Magazine belts from Callum Smith in December, needed just ten weeks to make his first defence against mandatory challenger Avni Yildirim at Miami’s Challenging Rock Stadium on Saturday night, live on DAZN.

A win over Yildirim would set up a unification first with WBO champion Saunders, with whom he reportedly has a deal in place to fight on Cinco De Mayo weekend in May as part of a two-fight pact with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing, and the fight is expected to take place in Las Vegas.

Many believe undefeated southpaw Saunders has the style to trouble the four-time world heavyweight champion, and Alvarez insists that while the Briton would be a tough challenge, he believes he has seen every style in his 15-plus year career.

“His style is very complex” Alvarez told Ring magazine.

“He’s a leftist. That makes it even harder.

“But I’m a fighter who’s fought all styles. I’m ready for any style. I just have to work.

“I always look at that. I always look to the future and that’s what motivates me to keep winning fights.

“I really want [to fight Saunders] in Las Vegas.

“I would really like to go back to Las Vegas. Hopefully, with the pandemic, things will go back to normal and we can go back to Las Vegas.”

If the fight with Saunders happens on Cinco De Mayo weekend in May, the 30-year-old will likely face the other 168-pound titleholder, IBF champion Plant.

The 28-year-old, who is also undefeated, defended his belt for the third time with a victory over Caleb Truax, and Alvarez has high praise for “Sweethands.”

“He’s a great fighter,” Alvarez said when asked about the American.

“He’s a player who has a lot of skills and of course, if he becomes champion, he’ll be in my path and I’m going to go for him.”

When asked about his opinion on his rival’s victory over Truax, the Mexican replied: “I watched two or three rounds and fell asleep.”

The delicate heavyweight star moved up to delicate heavyweight in November 2019, dethroning Sergey Kovalev to become WBO champion, before vacating the belt and returning to 168 pounds to defeat Smith.

However, Canelo, who began his career at 154lbs, has ruled out a future return to the 175lbs division, where Artur Beterbiev (IBF/WBC) and Dmitry Bivol (WBA) reign supreme, but says a return to middleweight is also an option, where a trilogy with IBF holder Gennady Golovkin would be lying.

“All right, [trainer and manager] Eddie [Reynoso] he doesn’t want me to fight at 175 pounds anymore because it’s too gigantic of an advantage [for the opponent]– Alvarez added.

“I really feel good at 168, but I can go down to 160. I don’t know.

“I’m open to anything. And like I said, I want the best fights for the people, for the fans.

“My goal right now is unification. If this fight [with Golovkin comes up] so why not?”

Kaisy Khademi has been on an incredible journey and in order to one day fulfil her dream of becoming a world champion, she has already fought some of the toughest battles she will probably ever face.

Khademi (8-0, 2 KOs) defends his WBO European Super Flyweight title while the vacant IBF European crown hangs in the balance on Saturday at the Copper Box Arena when he faces Ijaz Ahmed live on BT Sport, the main event after Lyon Woodstock tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday ahead of his fight with Anthony Cacace.

Khademi now lives in London and is focused on climbing the career ladder, but it is a far cry from the troubling but fascinating childhood that saw the 26-year-old embark on a four-year journey to the UK to escape the Taliban.

Born in Kabul, Khademi was in the region during the Taliban’s rule and the outbreak of the Afghan war, a situation he remembers well.

“The war had just started, it was a very bad time to grow up,” Khademi said. proboxing-fans.com in November.

“So I was four years vintage and our family was not unthreatening at all. The war was crazy, everyone was being shot at, everyone was being killed, people were being dragged out of their homes, people were being shot at.

“At that time it was a very bad time and all we had to do was flee the country.”

After two years in Pakistan, Khademi, then six, left with up to 30 family members, heading to the UK in search of a safer life.

However, this would not be a routine journey, rather a journey full of obstacles and challenges that very few face in their lifetime.

“We walked through the jungle at night, hiding from the police, I spent a day in the shed, and then the next day I moved to another place.

“Day by day we moved from house to house and got closer and closer to the borders.

“When I was walking in the jungle, there was a moment when my foot got stuck in the mud, my shoe disappeared, I was walking on a bear foot and I had a cut all over my foot.

“I was juvenile, but there were moments when I suffered a lot, but above all it was an adventure. When I look back, it seems like an adventure because I had no responsibilities, I was juvenile, I was a child.

“The main pressure and responsibility was on the others, because if something happened, they would pay the consequences, and they didn’t want to get caught.

“Now I know that if I were that age, I would have had a lot more responsibility, it would have been a lot harder, and I would have been a lot more afraid of getting caught.

“At one point we split into three groups, we all got lost, and when we got to Germany we met up at the same camp and ended up in the same camp.”

Despite his hard past, Khademi has an admirable perspective on the path that has brought him to where he is today and uses this as motivation to achieve his ambitions in boxing.

“I am very grateful, I know how hard it is [I’ve worked] I’ve come a long way to get here, now I want to operate it positively and make something of myself.

“I’m smarter now, I can relate it more to the journey. As an amateur, I never took boxing too seriously. It was just nice to stay out of trouble.

“I never thought I would come this far. I have a lot of people giving me routes home, my whole family giving me routes, so I feel like I have a responsibility to end this journey the way we started our journey from Pakistan to get to the UK.

“It was a long journey, in many places we could have given up because we had no money, we were lost, hungry, at any moment we could have given up, given ourselves to the government and said, ‘Listen, send us back,’ they would probably lock us up for a few months and send us back.

“But we never lost hope and we kept moving towards this dream to get here and I have the same mindset to win the world title and that’s the mindset I’m using to hopefully get there.”

Saturday evening gives Khademi another chance to stay on that path when he clashes with Ijaz Ahmed in east London.

The couple were due to meet in November, but shortly after the interview, Khademi tested positive for Covid-19.

The 26-year-old is the fourth best super flyweight in the UK, according to the data. Boxrec.comhis opponent is ranked fifth and Khademi, who signed with Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions in June, believes the fight could go within the scheduled ten-round distance.

“People will see the strength in me.

“They will see a lot of movement, a lot of sliding and a lot of skill, and it will be a breathtaking fight and maybe [you’ll] See knockout.

“So tune in and watch, it’s gonna be a fun fight because I know he’s coming to start a war and I’m there to start my own war.

“He probably judges me based on my last few fights, and in my last few fights I boxed with a very impoverished right hand and that’s why I was on my back foot.

“But this time people will see what my right hand is all about and I have to make a statement.”

The Khademi vs Ahmed fight will be broadcast on Saturday 27th February at 7.30pm on BT Sport 1

India, with a population of 1.35 billion, has yet to produce a single professional boxing world champion.

Indian boxing’s poster boy Vijender Singh led the charge, winning Olympic and world championship bronze medals before signing as a pro with Frank Warren and then Top Rank, amassing an unbeaten record of 12-0.

However, at 35 years elderly and not seen in the ring since 2019, it is tough to see how much more Singh can achieve.

The task of shining a airy on boxing in his region now falls to 28-year-old Sukhdeep Singh Bhatti (8-0, 3 KOs).

Sukhdeep, who had modest results in amateur competition compared to the likes of Singh, gained attention at national level, which led to him signing with Canadian promoter Tyler Buxton.

India’s current pound-for-pound number one spoke exclusively to Adam Noble-Forcey about how the kid from Punjab ended up in Ontario.

“After good results in the village, state and national competitions, the same family that founded the academy in my village gave me the opportunity to come to Canada periodically and train with Ryan Grant, my current coach and confidant.

“I came for stints and realised that the training, expertise and resources in Canada helped me develop at a faster pace than the training in Punjab, so I tried to come as often as I could from my early 20s onwards.

“When I turned pro and signed with Tyler Buxton at United Promotions, I decided Canada was where I needed to be to elevate my game and get to the next level.”

Having boxed exclusively as a professional in Canada, Sukhdeep appeared to be fully recovered in his fresh home.

“Canada is a breath of fresh air. This country is way ahead of the curve when it comes to accepting other cultures, and I have never felt out of place here.

“The boxing scene here has been steadily improving over the years I have been boxing here. I routinely have the opportunity to train and spar with some of the fighters who will be making a mark in their division in the near future.

“Of course, there is still a long way to go before our fighters reach the level of those in the US, Mexico and many other major countries, but the work is really progressing,” Bhatti told proboxing-fans.com.

Having grown up in a country where cricket plays a dominant role, where did Sukheep get the inspiration to try his hand at boxing?

“I remember when I was very youthful, I used to roam around the Sher-E Punjab Sports Academy premises.

“I had an ongoing dispute with one of the boxers who trained there. At that time, I knew only one way to settle the score, and that was a brutal win or loss.

“But one of my trainers found out about my problem with the boxer and told me the only way to resolve the dispute was through professional boxing. I put on gloves, started training every day and never looked back.

Most of them are inspired by large names like Ali, Hagler, Robinson etc. However, Sukhdeep’s lust for boxing came from a more organic source.

“Where I grew up in Punjab, we heard murmurs about ‘this and that’, but boxing and other sports were much less televised and [even less] more is said than in the West.

“There were definitely certain fighting styles that I was more drawn to and enjoyed watching growing up, but I don’t remember anyone really standing out to inspire me to box.

“As primitive and cluttered as it may sound, I have always loved fighting. At first, I was driven by victory. But as I got older, it became more about my passion for art and making a name for myself for my family, friends, my village and my people.

I was curious to hear the middleweight’s opinion on whether India is a potential sleeping giant in boxing, with its passion for the sport and sometimes tough conditions.

“His [boxing] is immense and very competitive for both male and female boxers. The population alone ensures that there will always be very talented fighters.

“The problem is that sports are not a priority, and among the sports that are given some emphasis, combat sports don’t stand a chance. The raw potential is definitely there.

“For example, in Punjab, where agriculture is our livelihood, we come from endless generations of farmers. Therefore, this gene pool is more likely to have a forceful constitution and/or stamina to withstand the most tough occupations and climates. However, resources and priorities do not allow for a good solution to this situation.

“There is potential to satisfy people’s hunger. But if we know that much more is needed, resources are needed! What papers on the cracks [at the moment] these are examples of generosity and love from independent donors. It was the same with me!

“The real question is whether the government will provide further funding and incentives for the health and well-being of its citizens. Let’s hope the necessary changes are made.”

Undefeated and sitting atop the current Boxrec India rankings in pounds, where and who is next for the boxing prince of Punjab?

“I’m focused on myself and training every day. I trust Tyler to be my ‘who’ guy. Of course I could give you a list of headliners and pay-per-view titleholders I’d like to box, but really, this is the basis for me fighting the fight. Tyler just tells me where and when and he knows I’ll be ready.

“Of course it’s great to be undefeated. I feel privileged to be in this position and to have such an amazing team of people behind me. Although my record is impeccable, there are certainly areas that need constant nourishment and improvement.

“In the near future I want to improve and be the best I can be. In the medium term I am hungry for more titles and exposure. I want to leave my mark on boxing! In the long term I want to inspire others who come from developing parts of the world to do the same, where opportunities are meager.

“For me, it’s all about becoming and then, very soon, giving back.”

Author: Adam Noble-Forcey
Follow Adam on Twitter @Adam4cSports