Those who wanted to watch the fight between Canelo Alvarez and Sergey Kovalev at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday night had to wait past 1:00 am ET due to competition on the fight night.
DAZN and Golden Boy Promotions decided to schedule the Alvarez-Kovalev fight card for the same night as UFC 244, which was already a pretty silly move. Despite the conflict, DAZN and Golden Boy recognized how popular the main event at UFC 244 headlined by Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal was, so they decided to hold off on starting the Canelo fight until after the MMA fight finished. The result was a lengthy wait between fights.
Ryan Garcia fought Romero Duno on the undercard just before the Canelo fight and won via first-round knockout. That fight was expected to go longer, but it ended a few minutes after 8:30 pm PT in Las Vegas. Since the fight ended so early, fans waited over 90 minutes before the Canelo fight to begin as the UFC card played out.
Canelo and Kovalev were literally waiting around on couches for an hour.
And Canelo has gotten sick of pacing while waiting to go out pic.twitter.com/i08CUL5xUE
— Kevin Iole (@KevinI) November 3, 2019
Here’s what is going on at MGM pic.twitter.com/9QWiNjt09W
— Kevin Iole (@KevinI) November 3, 2019
Beyond just the wait, three different national anthems played, which extended the wait time until the fight. The bout did not finally begin until around 10:15 pm PT.
Earlier in the day, UFC boss Dana White mocked “dummy” Oscar De La Hoya for the poor scheduling:
Dana White vs Oscar Dela Hoya is marinating quiet well. Who says boxing’s dead pic.twitter.com/BlOquKW4NG
— NBT BOXING (@BoxingNbt) November 2, 2019
After seeing such a late start time for the fight, it’s hard to disagree with White.
