Alvarez v Fielding: Briton ready to seize chance against Mexican legend

Three months later, Fielding was in bed while his partner fed their newborn daughter Romi. His trainer Jamie Moore phoned him.

Fielding explains: “Jamie said ‘Canelo wants to fight you’, so I said ‘what?’

“I asked what weight and when he said my weight – super-middleweight – I said ‘sound, let’s do it’.

“Then I’m thinking, how am I going to go to sleep now? So the next thing I’m in bed watching Canelo versus Gennady Golovkin on my phone.”

In fact, Moore had been holding back on the news for a few days, having resolved not to tell his fighter until the deal was done.

Much of the boxing world was as shocked as Fielding, with Alvarez moving up a weight division fresh from signing a £278m five-year fight deal to make him boxing’s highest-paid athlete.

Tweets that Fielding could not understand flooded in from Mexico, television channels suddenly wanted interviews by the bucket load and for the first time his next-door neighbour on the estate he had recently moved to began asking who he was.

A global media tour even saw him ring the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange for business, following in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela, Bill Gates and Mickey Mouse among others.

“I looked at the itinerary for the media week and the Wednesday said ‘ring bell’ and something else. I didn’t have a clue what it was,” admits Fielding.

“I walked into the Stock Exchange, I get a posh breakfast, there are pictures of me everywhere and I’m thinking ‘oh my God’. My mates were texting saying ‘I can’t believe you did that, have you seen who has done that in the past?’

“Once the fight was announced, I knew what would come. Everyone now is on to me, talking about the fight, even some of the old women by my place. It will be the biggest win by any fighter in a long time.”