Canelo Alvarez vs. Avni Yildirim predictions, best bets: Finding values in the super middleweight title fight

Canelo Alvarez returns to the ring on Saturday night for a fight with Avni Yildirim at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida (which airs on DAZN starting at 7 p.m. ET). It’s a perplexing fight for many, with Yildirim having been out of action for a little over two years and coming off a technical decision loss in his most recent fight. But boxing politics often mean the best fighters in the world — or the best, in the case of Alvarez — are given the choice of facing mandatory opponents or losing their status as world champions.

So, right or wrong, Alvarez will put his WBA and WBC super middleweight championships on the line against Yildirim as the WBC has demanded. He’ll do so as a -4000 favorite, a betting line wherein a $4000 bet on Alvarez will win you just $100, and that likely undersells Alvarez’s chances of having his hand raised.

With those long odds on the bout winner, those with an itch to lay down a little money at the betting window will likely turn to prop bets surrounding the fight. To that end, we’ve taken a look at the odds and have laid out our picks for the best bets to make ahead of Alvarez’s battle with Yildirim. Odds via William Hill Sportsbook.

Prop bets

The first thing that jumps out in the lines is the disparity between Alvarez via decision and the fight going on the distance. If you were to have interest in Alvarez taking a decision win, you get extra value by simply taking the fight to go the distance. It also provides some security in the unlikely event that Yildirim somehow scrapes out a win on the scorecards. Until a shift in the odds that makes Alvarez via decision a better line than the fight going the distance, taking that line should be out of the question.

The +700 odds for the fight going the distance suggests an implied 12% chance of that result.  

Yildirim’s fight with Chris Eubank Jr. in 2017 combined with Alvarez’s power has made Alvarez via knockout the frontrunner for method of result. In the Eubank fight, Yildirim was caught repeatedly by clean, blistering power shots and didn’t manage to get out of the third round before getting flattened.

Alvarez has true power, but also exceptional boxing skills. Despite that power, Alvarez only has a 29% knockout rate since 2017. Yildirim isn’t quite on the level of most of the men Alvarez has faced during that time. He’s not quite a Danny Jacobs or Callum Smith, and certainly not on the level of Gennadiy Golovkin.

Round betting

Since 2010, Alvarez’s knockouts have come on average in the middle rounds with 14 knockouts averaging out to the sixth round. While the idea of an early knockout isn’t out of the question, Alvarez winning by knockout sometime between the fifth and seventh rounds seems solid. The odds for an Alvarez knockout in the fifth, sixth and seventh rounds are +600, +700 and +900, respectively.

Picks

• Fight to go the distance, YES: +700 (one unit)
• Alvarez by KO/TKO in Round 5: +600 (0.5 units)
• Alvarez by KO/TKO in Round 7: +900 (0.5 units)