Mbilli's promoter hits out: "We are not here to be part of the Canelo story"
The champion brought the WBC belt, but everything revolved around Canelo. Mbilli's promoter Camille Estephan criticised the staging – Canelo vows to hit Mbilli "wherever".
Archive image · Photo: Boxing AIBA / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
At the final press conference in Riyadh, the challenger rather than the titleholder took centre stage. That did not sit well with Camille Estephan, promoter of WBC champion Christian Mbilli. "We are not here to be part of the Canelo story," he said, according to Boxing247. "We are here to write our own story," Yahoo Sports quoted him as saying. Mbilli, he said, has "the full belief and conviction that he will come out still champion and take the throne from Canelo".
According to the WBC, Mbilli himself spoke of the best training camp of his life, while his trainer Marc Ramsay described a hard camp. After the press conference Canelo said he was flexible. "I'll hit him wherever," he said in Spanish, according to Claro Sports. "We come ready for anything. We come to win that title." He brushed off his critics: "The only thing I care about is winning on Saturday."
The event is billed as "Mexico vs. The World". According to Yahoo Sports, eight fighters from the stable of Canelo's trainer Eddy Reynoso are on the card.