Canelo Alvarez is now less than one week away from his mega-fight with Terence Crawford on Netflix, but seems far removed from the Mexican star who put on a beatdown in his 2021 fight.
Terence Crawford will vie for greatness on September 13th as he jumps two weight divisions to face the only two-time undisputed super-middleweight and the face of boxing himself.
Canelo Alvarez will hope to silence his doubters as he has been unable to secure a stoppage win since 2021, when he defeated Caleb Plant.
It was just two fights before that, though, that Canelo put a clinic on against Avni Yildirim, though it was on the undercard where the real drama happened.
Zhilei Zhang fought through kidney failure on Canelo vs Yildirim undercard
In February 2021, 54-1-2 Canelo came off his win over Callum Smith with a bout against 21-2 Avni Yildirim.
Yildirim had lost only to Chris Eubank Jr. and Anthony Dirrell, but was blitzed by Canelo in just three rounds.
The big win, though, came moments after a near-death experience for fan-favorite ‘Big Bang’ Zhilei Zhang, who fought 26-4 Jerry Forrest.
Though the Zhang fans have come to know is a knockout artist who dropped Joseph Parker, arguably beat Filip Hrgovic, and all but finished Deontay Wilder‘s career, he was not himself in this fight, and dropped a majority decision draw to Forrest.
The reason why was revealed later on, as Zhang explained that he had kidney failure and collapsed soon after the fight.
Zhang, who trained with LL Cool J, suggested the fight taking place during COVID and the bubble setting his team were housed in made him drink far less than he needed to, resulting in the failure of his kidneys.
He revealed that he thought he was dying in the final moments of the fight and just after, and admitted he had no recollection of the later rounds.
Zhilei Zhang was stopped for the first time in most recent bout
In his most recent outing, Zhang suffered a crippling body shot that left him unable to continue.
The Chinese heavyweight had never been stopped before and had only been dropped once, earlier in his career by 6-2 Juan Goode.
The loss came against 25-0 Agit Kabayel, whom Zhang dropped in the fifth round, but was beaten by one round later.
With the win, Kabayel captured the WBC interim heavyweight world title.