Canelo Alvarez and Christian Mbilli both made weight Friday in Riyadh, clearing the last formality before Saturday’s WBC super middleweight title fight at Kingdom Arena. Canelo stepped on the scale at 167.6 pounds and Mbilli at 167.8, according to MMA Fighting, which is running live updates of the undercard and main event. The DAZN preliminary card opens at 10 a.m. ET and the main card follows at 2 p.m. ET. Turki Alalshikh posted the weigh-in and the Thursday press conference on X.
The title picture got here by a strange road. Terence Crawford beat Canelo by unanimous decision in September 2025 to take the WBC belt and others, then retired even though Canelo had exercised his rematch clause. Mbilli held the interim title, won with a first-round knockout of Maciej Sulecki. He retained it against Lester Martinez via split draw on the Canelo vs. Crawford undercard. With Crawford gone and a planned bout against Hamzah Sheeraz falling apart, Mbilli was promoted to undisputed status. So Canelo (63-3-2) is the challenger now, chasing a belt he used to own, against a champion (29-0-1) who has never lost.
Canelo framed it as a career moment. Speaking through a Spanish-to-English translation at the ceremonial weigh-ins, he said, “This is very important for me. I’ve been doing this for the last 21 years. I won my first title 16 years ago, so it’s very important for me to be here to take that title and obviously get back into that world championship corner.” He also took a shot at Mbilli’s résumé, saying his own experience is very different, that Mbilli has never faced anybody like him, and that he plans to show Mbilli on Saturday exactly what that means.
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Mbilli wasn’t shy either. “Tomorrow night I’m going to beat him everywhere,” he said. “Best conditioning, best punch, best technique, I’m going to put all my 100 percent on my fight.” He called it “the fight of the decade, the fight of the year.”
Full card and weights
Main card (DAZN, 2 p.m. ET)
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- Canelo Alvarez (167.6) vs. Christian Mbilli (167.8)
- Jamie Munguia (167.4) vs. Nikita Zon (167.5)
- Rafael Espinoza (125.8) vs. Ricardo Blandon (126)
- Reito Tsutsumi (129) vs. Raymundo Rojas (128.8)
- David Picasso (125.8) vs. Carl Jammes Martin (126)
Preliminary card (DAZN, 10 a.m. ET)
- Sultan Almohammed (131.2) vs. Erick Villegas (130.5)
- Bek Nurmaganbet (171.5) vs. Marcos Vazquez (170.5)
- Emiliano Rojo (165) vs. Flavius Biea (164.6)
- Brayan Leon (166.5) vs. Hector Aguirre (168)
No results were available at the time of writing. MMA Fighting’s live blog will carry them bout by bout as the night goes.
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Quick take
I’m taking Canelo on the cards. Mbilli’s zero is real, but the one blemish on his record came in his first title defense, a split draw with Martinez, and now he’s being asked to go 12 rounds with a man who has 68 pro fights behind him. Canelo has been collecting answers since he won his first belt 16 years ago. Mbilli promised to beat him “everywhere,” which is a lot of real estate to cover against someone who has seen every version of this fight. The Crawford loss showed Canelo can be outworked by an elite technician, and I don’t think Mbilli is that guy yet.
