Janibek Alimkhanuly wants Canelo Alvarez. He is not currently allowed to fight anyone.
The former unified middleweight champion posted on Friday that he intends to beat WBO super-middleweight champion Hamzah Sheeraz and then unify against Canelo.
Canelo, get ready! Inshalla, I’ll beat Shiraz and we’ll unify the title!
The sequence he is describing is not far-fetched. Sheeraz is due to defend against Alimkhanuly as mandatory challenger, and Canelo faces WBC champion Christian Mbilli on October 31 in Riyadh, looking to reclaim a belt he lost when Terence Crawford outpointed him last September. Mbilli was upgraded from interim to full champion after Crawford retired in December.
The complication is why Alimkhanuly has not fought since April 2025. He tested positive for meldonium in a sample taken on November 15, 2025, days before a planned unification with Erislandy Lara, and the B sample confirmed it. The IBF stripped him. The WBO suspended him for a year, retroactive to December 2, but let him keep his middleweight title, which he then vacated in July to move up a division. That suspension does not expire until December.
He has denied wrongdoing throughout, saying he has always supported clean sport, that he changed nothing in his supplements, and that he requested a retest.
Plenty of people have criticised the WBO for leaving him a path to a second divisional title rather than stripping him. Canelo, for his part, has not responded.
