Canelo vs Crawford: ‘Terence Crawford is the new face of boxing’

Alvarez arrived at the news conference marked up but unbowed. “I’m going to continue,” he said, swiftly putting to bed any suggestion he might call it a day.

As a teenager, the flame-haired fighter would ride Guadalajara’s city buses for hours, peddling ice creams just to help his family get by.

His first paydays in the ring were scarcely better – a few dollars here, a handful of ticket sales there.

In Vegas Alvarez was counting a reported purse of $150m (£111m). A man who once sold ice creams now earns fortunes big enough to buy factories.

Yet with superstardom comes scrutiny. Critics point to grey areas in his career: the debatable scorecards against Erislandy Lara and at least one of his trilogy bouts with Gennady Golovkin, fights that many felt should have gone the other way.

Others still refuse to move past his six-month ban in 2018 after failing two drugs tests, something Alvarez says was caused by contaminated meat.

Questions now linger over whether Alvarez is fading. His last outing against William Scull was a rather below-par performance, and his own words hint at the struggle.

“Sometimes you try and your body cannot go – that’s the frustration. I try it and my body does not let me go. You need to accept it,” he said.

Asked what troubled him most about Crawford, Alvarez said: “Everything. He has everything.”