Perhaps we have been spoiled of late as boxing fans, with huge events filled with undisputed championships, unification bouts, title fights and other matches that likely would not have been made if not for the money being offered.

Anything else will seem like less.

But even if we were not to grade on a curve – to not make the superlative into the standard – then the three shows on May 2-4, taken individually or collectively, may feel like a letdown.

It depends on what you want.

For some people, it is about the fights. For others, it is about the fighters. The person is the product.

That is why Saul “Canelo” Alvarez remains one of the biggest box office attractions even when his opponents aren’t among the best super middleweights. It is why Gervonta “Tank” Davis has become the most popular American fighter, drawing huge gates in multiple cities despite not yet facing any of his fellow lightweight titleholders. It is why the upcoming bout between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jnr has reportedly already sold more than 60,000 tickets even though Benn has yet to defeat a notable welterweight and Eubank has yet to win a world title.

Back when boxing was still regularly featured on HBO and Showtime, there were occasions when mismatches featuring popular names would garner high ratings, while viewership was lower for competitive fights that guaranteed excitement. 

People like events. And an event can carry a big-fight atmosphere even if it isn’t the biggest or best fight that can be made.

Some of boxing’s biggest events have traditionally taken place on weekends coinciding with, or at least near, Cinco de Mayo (May 5) and Mexican Independence Day (September 16).

This year, there will be the usual Saturday show, as well as major cards the day before and the day after. This is not just a one-day event. It is an unofficial three-day festival. So far, a total of nine fights have been announced for this festival, including five title fights, two of them undisputed championship matches – both of which feature pound-for-pound stalwarts.

On Friday, May 2, a tripleheader in New York City’s Times Square has Ryan Garcia-Rolando Romero in the main event, Devin Haney-Jose Ramirez in the co-feature and Teofimo Lopez-Arnold Barboza in the opening bout.

On Saturday, May 3, Alvarez – who has been the holiday’s headliner more often than not in recent years – will face William Scull in the main event. The undercard includes a cruiserweight title bout between Badou Jack and Ryan Rozicki, a heavyweight fight between Martin Bakole and Efe Ajagba and a rematch between Jaime Munguia and Bruno Surace, who knocked out Munguia in one of last year’s biggest upsets.

On Sunday, May 4, Naoya Inoue will defend his undisputed junior featherweight championship against Ramon Cardenas, and the chief supporting bout will see featherweight titleholder Rafael Espinoza take on Edward Vazquez.

It is reminiscent of how WrestleMania, long the biggest night in professional wrestling, has expanded into a two-day event for the WWE, with other promotions adding shows in the host city to capitalize on so many fans being in town.

Except WrestleMania is designed to be the culmination for its top storylines. In the case of Cinco de Mayo Weekend 2025, this feels more like table-setting or, to mix metaphors, appetizers before we get to the main course. 

Let’s look at things day by day:

Friday, May 2 in New York City

Everything about this show is about setting up a rematch between Garcia and Haney, and/or a fight between one of them and the winner of Lopez-Barboza.

Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney had their infamous first fight in April 2024. Garcia, 24-1 (20 KOs), came in massively overweight, seemingly intentionally, and then scored three knockdowns en route to a majority decision win. Then that result was overturned because Garcia tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug. Garcia is returning from a one-year suspension. Haney also hasn’t fought since then, opting to wait for a bigger payday while working in the gym on fixing his flaws. 

While Romero, 16-2 (13 KOs), did well against Garcia in a sparring session about eight years ago, he will be the significant underdog in this professional prizefight. Romero was knocked out by Gervonta Davis at lightweight in 2023 and by Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz at junior welterweight in 2024. Garcia seems as if he will be the naturally bigger and stronger man.

Haney, 31-0 (15 KOs), is a former undisputed lightweight champion and previously held a world title at 140lbs, but he is otherwise an unknown quantity. That’s because we haven’t had a chance to see how much he has improved from the fighter who kept getting caught by Garcia’s left hook, or how much that fight took out of him. 

Ramirez, 29-2 (18 KOs), is a former unified junior welterweight titleholder whose only defeats came against Josh Taylor in a fight for the undisputed championship in 2021 and against Barboza last November. There are some observers who think Ramirez is on the decline. Whether that conclusion is proper or premature, this is an opportunity for Ramirez to prove otherwise.

It is fair for Garcia and Haney to shake off some rust given their long layoffs. These are not the most thrilling of pairings for them, though there certainly could have been worse choices. The issue is that this show will be on pay-per-view. The question is what the price will be, given that boxing financier Turki Alalskhikh has seemingly not sought to be profitable in his events and has priced his PPVs much lower than is typically the case.

The most competitive fight, on paper at least, is Teofimo Lopez-Arnold Barboza. 

Lopez, 21-1 (13 KOs), is a former lightweight champion and is currently the lineal champion and WBO titleholder at 140lbs by virtue of his win over Taylor in 2023. Barboza will be Lopez’s best opponent by far since then, and Lopez needs a good performance if he wants to actually be as marketable as he thinks he is. 

Barboza, 32-0 (11 KOs), is highly motivated to win a world title after being a professional prizefighter for nearly 12 years and only now getting his first shot. However, Barboza’s style is not always aesthetically pleasing. So as competitive as this fight seems to be, hopefully it also turns out to be compelling.

Saturday, May 3 in Riyadh

Although this fight between Canelo Alvarez and William Scull is for the undisputed super middleweight championship, that statement, while true, needs an asterisk.

It was just a year ago that Scull was deemed unworthy of facing Canelo, who had all four world titles and opted to drop the IBF belt, and therefore his recognition as the undisputed champion, rather than face Scull.

Canelo, 62-2-2 (39 KOs), is still seen as the true king at 168lbs. Scull, 23-0 (9 KOs), won a controversial over Vladimir Shishkin in October to pick up the vacant IBF title. 

There simply wasn’t any demand for Canelo to face Scull, especially given the disappointment of late with Canelo’s choice of opponents, and particularly on PPV, which this show will also be. But as noted earlier in this column, Canelo’s fights are events. 

He went from the co-feature – fighting underneath Floyd Mayweather Jnr on a split-site show in September 2011 and in the same arena in May 2012 – to being a superstar, inheriting the traditional dates that previously primarily belonged to Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Oscar De La Hoya.

Canelo headlined on the traditional holiday weekends in September 2012 (against Josesito Lopez); September 2013 (Mayweather); May 2015 (James Kirkland); May 2016 (Amir Khan); September 2016 (Liam Smith); May 2017 (Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr); September 2017 (the first Gennadiy Golovkin fight); September 2018 (the second Golovkin bout); May 2019 (Daniel Jacobs); May 2021 (Billy Joe Saunders); May 2022 (Dmitry Bivol); September 2022 (the third Golovkin match); May 2023 (John Ryder); September 2023 (Jermell Charlo); May 2024 (Jaime Munguia); and Edgar Berlanga (September 2024).

You’ll notice that not all of these were marquee matchups or competitive fights. The Scull fight won’t move the needle. It isn’t designed to. It is instead starting up Canelo’s relationship with Alalshikh and setting up a September mega-fight with Terence Crawford.

As for the undercard, Jack, 28-3-3 (17 KOs), will be returning from a 26-month layoff and is 41 years old. He was recently reinstated as a cruiserweight titleholder and was previously a super middleweight titleholder (Jack had a secondary belt at 175lbs). Rozicki, 20-1-1 (19 KOs), has had a pair of close bouts with fellow contender Yamil Peralta and has a fan-friendly style.

“Fan-friendly” can also describe heavyweights Bakole and Ajagba. This fight was initially expected to be a part of the Times Square show but has instead landed a day later. It was also supposed to be an elimination bout for a future heavyweight title fight, but that changed after Bakole came in on very short notice, and very out of shape, for a second-round stoppage loss to Joseph Parker in February.

Bakole, now 21-2 (16 KOs), had otherwise designated himself as the boogeyman of the division. The question will be whether the quick loss to Parker did any lasting damage, and whether it revealed any weaknesses that still exist when Bakole is better prepared and conditioned. Ajagba, 20-1 (14 KOs), has won five straight since losing a decision to Frank Sanchez in 2021. This should be fun while it lasts.

Munguia, 44-2 (35 KOs), had been rebuilding from his loss to Canelo when everything suddenly crumbled last December against Surace. It was a shock, not just because Surace was unheralded and had never fought anyone on Munguia’s level, but also because Surace had often competed at middleweight and was coming up to 168lbs to face Munguia, and because Surace had previously only scored four knockouts in his 25 wins. Surace, now 26-0-2 (5 KOs), will seek to prove that the first time wasn’t a fluke, and wasn’t just a lucky shot.

There will be suspense in the air for as long as Munguia-Surace II lasts. Either Munguia will get the win and move on toward more notable names at super middleweight, or Surace will repeat, turning Munguia’s career prospects from troubled to rubble.

Sunday, May 4 in Las Vegas

Inoue came out fast when he entered the junior featherweight division after previously winning a world title at junior flyweight, another belt at junior bantamweight, and becoming the undisputed bantamweight champion.

First he took on the consensus No. 1 guy at 122 pounds, dominating unified titleholder Stephen Fulton over the course of eight rounds in July 2023. Before the year was over, Inoue added the remaining two belts by defeating the other unified titleholder, Marlon Tapales, via 10th-round knockout. For Inoue’s first fight of 2024, he came off the canvas early to dispatch one of his top remaining challengers, Luis Nery, with a sixth-round TKO.

Inoue has since taken steps downward in terms of level of competition. And so that means this upcoming fight, while against a ranked contender, has people champing at the bit for someone different.

That’s what this show is setting up. 

But first some background: In September, Inoue took on TJ Doheny in a keep-busy bout just four months after the Nery victory. Doheny had at least put together three straight decent wins, but he otherwise was a former titleholder who had shown he no longer belonged at the top level.

“That’s all right,” we thought. “Inoue is going to take on one of his mandatory challengers at the end of the year, defending against undefeated contender Sam Goodman.” Except Goodman suffered a pair of cuts in sparring, one that postponed the Inoue fight and the second leading to Inoue taking on a late-replacement opponent, Ye Joon Kim.

Now Inoue, 29-0 (26 KOs), is facing Ramon Cardenas, 26-1 (14 KOs). Cardenas’ loss came nearly eight years ago, when he was very early in his career. He’s been on a good run, including a unanimous decision over the 20-0 Bryan Acosta in February. Cardenas is ranked No. 9 by The Ring, No. 5 by the Transnational Boxing Ratings Board, and is rated by three of the four sanctioning bodies.

“Cardenas is at least a top 10 guy at 122, but he’s middle of that pack at best and would be Inoue’s third ho-hum foe in a row,” Cliff Rold of The Corner Stool posted on social media. 

The belief – and hope – is that Inoue, should he beat Cardenas, would then move on to Murodjon Akhmadaliev, 13-1 (10 KOs). Akhmadaliev is a former unified titleholder who lost to Tapales via split decision in 2023 and hasn’t done much of note since, though he’s one of Inoue’s mandatory challengers and is seen as one of the top remaining contenders. And if Inoue beats Akhmadaliev, the supposed plan is for him to venture up to featherweight and challenge titleholder Nick Ball.

One undercard fight has been announced so far: Featherweight titleholder Rafael Espinoza, 26-0 (22 KOs), will face Edward Vazquez, 17-2 (4 KOs). 

Espinoza captured the WBO belt with a majority decision over Robeisy Ramirez in December 2023 and has made two successful defenses: a TKO4 over Sergio Chirino in June and a TKO6 of Ramirez in their December 2024 rematch.

Vazquez’s two losses came against good fighters and were both competitive/debatable: a split decision to Raymond Ford who went on to win a title at 126lbs (before losing it to Nick Ball), and a unanimous decision to then-junior lightweight titleholder Joe Cordina.

David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2 and @UnitedBoxingPod. He is the co-host of the United Boxing Podcast. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.