While Canelo Alvarez is currently scheduled to unify 168lb titles with Billy Joe Saunders, he’s just come out to explain how he had to deal with Mexican kidnappers in back in 2018 who had taken his brother. In an interview that’s scheduled to air this weekend on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, Canelo recounts what he describes as one of the moment difficult moments in his life, having his brother’s life at stake, not to mention only being days away from a title fight with Rocky Fielding.
“For three days I negotiated with [the kidnappers] to get them to release him. After I negotiated his release, I was still thinking, imagine if it was my daughter, or my mom or my dad, it would have been even more difficult for me. And on top of that, I had the fight on Saturday, and I had to do a thousand interviews [for the fight]. And nobody knew about it.”
Canelo would continue to explain how he never involved Mexican authorities in the kidnapping due to his fear of some police officers possibly being involved. It’s clear that Alvarez’s high profile makes him (and his family) a target for those seeking to extort him, but he says while he’d like to move his family out of Mexico, it’s difficult because they have their whole lives there and can’t bring himself to uproot them.