Canelo Alvarez to face Avni Yildirim on February 27

Canelo Alvarez is a little over a week removed from defeating Callum Smith to claim The Ring super middle weight championship and he already has his eyes on his next fight. His trainer and manager Eddy Reynoso told BoxingScene.com Alvarez will face WBC mandatory challenger Avni Yildirim in Guadalajara, Mexico on February 27.

Alvarez won a decisive unanimous decision over Smith on December 19th, and the immediate chatter was for a third fight with Gennadiy Golovkin. That could still be in the cards, but Alvarez wants to get his mandatory fight out of the way rather than vacate the WBC belt.

Yildrim is 21-2 with 12 KOs and coming off a technical split decision loss to Anthony Dirrell. The fight went to the scorecards during the tenth round due to Dirrell suffering a cut that got worse as the fight progressed. Two judges scored the fight 96-94 for Dirrell while one judge scored it 98-92 for Yildrim.

This would be Alvarez’s first fight in his home country of Mexico since defeating Kermit Cintron via TKO in November 2011. It would be his first fight in his home town of Guadalajara since beating Luciano Cuello in July 2010.