Canelo Alvarez is finishing training camp in Spain, eight days from Christian Mbilli, and says he is ready. The people who will describe the fight to American viewers are not expected to be in the building when he does it.

“I feel great. I don’t know how he feels, and I don’t really care how he feels. I care about how I feel, and I feel strong and ready to step in the ring again,” Alvarez said in training camp quotes sent out Thursday by Riyadh Season and DAZN. “Mbilli is a great fighter. He’s a tough fighter. He throws a lot of punches, and he’s a champion for a reason. I’m just glad to go face a champion, and I’m ready for that.”

Dan Rafael reported Wednesday night that the DAZN announce team will likely work the card from Europe. “Per sources, if #CaneloMbilli goes forward Oct. 31 in Riyadh, the likelihood is that the DAZN broadcast team will not be ringside and will call the card remotely from a studio in London,” Rafael posted on X. DAZN has not commented and has not announced a commentary lineup for a card it is selling in the United States as a $79.99 pay-per-view. The camp-quotes release it co-distributed Thursday listed the full ten-bout card and made no reference to travel or security.

Inside the card, the first public complaint about logistics came Wednesday from trainer Robert Garcia, whose unbeaten junior welterweight Lindolfo Delgado fights Arthur Biyarslanov for the vacant IBF title. “They’re already announcing the grand arrivals and all that nice information. I still have no flight information. They haven’t told me anything,” Garcia said on Boxing Scene Today, according to NY Fights.

“My team, at least my team with Lindolfo Delgado, we’ve been waiting all weekend. We don’t have no flights. We don’t have no information. So honestly, I don’t really know what’s going to happen,” Garcia said. “Lindolfo and the rest of my team should’ve already known they’re flying out in the next couple of days to be there at least one week before. We can’t be sitting, waiting, and thinking, ‘We’re just waiting for that flight. They’ll send it to us.’ They should have already.”

Garcia said he had been told the routing would run through Dubai, then a smaller airport near the venue, then “a four-hour drive to get there.” He will be in San Antonio this weekend with another fighter. “I don’t want to be in a documentary 25 years from now talking about all these brave fighters, coaches and managers that went [to Saudi Arabia] and never came back,” he said. “Hell no. I don’t want to.” Top Rank, which promotes Delgado (24-0, 16 KOs), has not commented. Riyadh Season has not responded. The grand arrivals are Tuesday.

Alvarez’s route is simpler. He has been in Spain for camp, where Oleksandr Usyk came to train with him for several days. “When you talk to him a little bit, you realize why he’s a champion. His mentality is everything,” Alvarez said. On the Crawford loss, his first since Dmitry Bivol and the one that cost him the undisputed championship, he was brief. “When you lose, you always look back at your mistakes, and at this level, there’s very little between a win and a loss. I did a good job of preparing for that fight, but throughout fight week my mind wasn’t there. I always say, I don’t want to look back on things. Now, I’m going to learn from that and look towards Mbilli. I think his style is perfect for me to go against and will make for a great fight.”

That is the matchup in one sentence from the man who has to fight it. Mbilli (29-0-1, 24 KOs) is a pressure fighter who throws in volume, won the WBC title from Lester Martinez and has never been in with a counterpuncher at Alvarez’s level. Alvarez (63-3-2, 39 KOs) has spent his career letting that kind of fighter come to him. When the fight was first announced, at a press conference in Egypt in May, Mbilli told him so to his face. “I’m not changing my style. I will put pressure, and we are going to see if he can deal with this,” Mbilli said, according to The Ring. “I don’t care about his age. It’s about our abilities to box. I think it’s the perfect time for me. Be ready, you’re going to be surprised. You will regret being in that ring.”

Alvarez’s answer that day: “He says it’s the perfect time because I am old, and this and that. I’ll say to him that if I was 50 years old, you still could not beat me. In this life, he cannot beat me. I am not your opponents who comes to France and makes it easy for you. C’mon bro.” Asked to put a number on Mbilli’s chances, he said, “In my mind, he has zero percent.”

Mbilli, in an earlier DAZN interview, put his own stake plainly. “I was a big fan of Canelo Alvarez. I’m still a big fan of Canelo Alvarez, and like a fan, I want to beat him. If I beat Canelo Alvarez, I become the next superstar,” he said, according to The Ring. “Canelo needs a title. He can’t fight without a title, and I am the only one who has the most beautiful title right now, the WBC. Many people want to see if he can take the pressure, and maybe he wants to prove he can take the pressure. We’re going to see.”

Alvarez, this week, on why he is still here at 36: “I love boxing. I enjoy boxing a lot and I always give 100% in the gym because I really love what I do. I’m the kind of person who, if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it 100%. For me, boxing is my passion.” On representing Mexico: “I never think about the pressure. For me, I feel like I work even better when I have pressure on me.” On the ring walk: “I’m definitely going to look for who is available to walk out with me.”

Beneath the main event, Jaime Munguia defends the WBA super middleweight title against unbeaten Russian Nikita Zon, Rafael Espinoza defends the WBO featherweight title against Lorenzo Parra, David Picasso meets unbeaten Filipino Carl Martin for the WBC Silver super bantamweight title, and Reito Tsutsumi faces Raymundo Rojas Garcia, as detailed in BoxingInsider’s undercard report.

A week after the fight, WWE is due in the same city, and Thursday brought the first on-record answer from TKO on whether that happens. “Right now, everything is still set. This weekend coming up in Abu Dhabi, we have a UFC fight. We have in the middle of November a Frieze art show. So far so good. Nothing’s been cancelled,” TKO executive chairman and CEO Ari Emanuel said on Fox News, where he was appearing to promote his new book, according to a transcript published by SEScoops. “We have a whole team kind of working on this, and if that doesn’t happen, where we can move it. It’s a daily monitoring.”

Dave Meltzer reported last week that the Crown Jewel decision rests with Emanuel and TKO president Mark Shapiro rather than with WWE’s Nick Khan or Paul Levesque. Everything WWE has done matches Emanuel’s words. The show remains advertised for Riyadh on November 7 with Roman Reigns vs. Sami Zayn and Liv Morgan vs. Chelsea Green. PWInsider reported Friday that WWE “remains intent on hosting Crown Jewel in the country on November 7,” and Fightful Select has the week’s schedule: Raw live from Barclays Center on Monday, November 2, SmackDown taped ahead of Crown Jewel, and Raw back in Greenville, South Carolina, on November 9, according to Wrestling Inc. A fan video posted Friday by KN Wrestling appears to show stage construction underway at the Riyadh venue with Morgan’s poster already up. WWE has not confirmed the construction and has not issued a statement.

The week’s events on the ground are the context for all of it. The State Department ordered non-emergency US government employees and their families out of Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, as BoxingInsider reported. That evening, a Houthi drone attack on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam killed two people, a Saudi citizen and an Indian national, and wounded eight, according to Al Jazeera. It was the third Saudi airport struck this month. Saudi aviation authorities said Thursday that “operations at the airport had resumed and air traffic had returned to normal.”

Shortly after 4 a.m. Friday, coalition air defenses shot down a ballistic missile headed for Riyadh, spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki said, after intercepting two drones over the southern region and another missile at Khamis Mushait overnight, according to Arab News. Explosions were heard in the capital and Civil Defense issued its fourth Riyadh alert of the month. The coalition’s count for October stands at more than 14 ballistic missiles and 60 drones aimed at the kingdom. On Thursday, al-Malki had announced the “interception and destruction of four drones in the regions of Riyadh and Medina,” according to Gulf News, and the Houthis listed the Saudi defense ministry in Riyadh among the targets they claimed over 48 hours. Saudi Arabia has not confirmed any strike landing in the capital. Saudi Aramco told essential staff to evacuate its Dhahran headquarters Thursday. Australia raised its travel advice for all of Saudi Arabia to Do Not Travel on October 20, citing “the potential for further attacks, sudden movement restrictions and airspace closures,” according to The Traveler. The US advisory remains at Level 3.

King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh reopened Wednesday for limited domestic flights, with Saudia and flynas operating under prior permission. Lufthansa and Air France have cancelled Riyadh service through mid-November.

None of the combat sports dates have moved. Dana White, asked at the UFC Edmonton press conference last Saturday whether the December 5 Riyadh card would relocate, answered with his itinerary: “I go to Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, I have like six events in the next 30 days, in Saudi, Qatar and Abu Dhabi,” according to Athlon Sports. UFC 333 is Saturday in Abu Dhabi, Zuffa Boxing’s Yoenis Adames vs. Gerome Warburton is November 14 in Riyadh, UFC Doha is November 21 and UFC Riyadh is December 5. Turki Alalshikh posted the Canelo-Mbilli face-off and tale of the tape Wednesday with the line “Book your ticket now,” and his fight week schedule opens Tuesday with the grand arrivals.

WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman has said he expects to travel at the end of the month because he does not consider it right for the organization’s boxers, judges and referees to be in Riyadh without him. Canelo has said he will fight. Emanuel has said a team is working on where Crown Jewel could go if Riyadh does not happen.

Between those statements is the practical question Garcia asked: when do the people on the card find out how they are getting there. Canelo already knows. He flies from Spain.