A homeless asks Canelo: Can you give me 100 pesos? Canelo’s response will surprise you!

It was any night in Guadalajara. January, almost 11. Cold air bitten the empty corners of a parking lot where Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez had just finished a brutal training session. Dressed in a black sweatshirt and sports pants, he walked to his truck without escorts, without audience, without cameras. Only him, his sore body and silence.

It was then that he saw him.

A figure hunched next to the alley that gave the gym. A man in his fifty, narrow beard, worn clothes, carefully organizing plastic bags with how little he had. Canelo doubted, remembering the warnings of his team. But something in the silent dignity of that stranger stopped him. At that moment, the champion did not see a threat. He saw a man.

He approached with respect. “Good night,” he said. The man looked at him surprised, with that mixture of shame and resignation that the ones that have long ceased to be seen as people have long since stopped. “I’m not causing problems, I was leaving,” he murmured. “You don’t have to leave,” Canelo replied. “This alley is not mine. You have the right to be here.”

The man nodded. Hesitated. Then, almost with physical pain, he asked: “Excuse me … could you give me 100 pesos? I’ve been without eating for two days.” It was a minimal request. But the silence that followed was no doubt, but of reflection. Canelo did not think about money. I thought about how brutal the life was forced to ask for it.

He extended his hand, with tickets that added more than 300 pesos. “Take,” he offered. But the man, far from pounced, looked into his eyes. “I just asked 100. I don’t want charity. I want to keep my dignity.” Canelo, surprised, kept the rest and delivered exactly what had been requested. The man accepted with a decent, almost solemn gesture.

“What’s the name of?” Asked the boxer. “Manuel Díaz,” he replied. I had not eaten since the previous day. Canelo doubted a second and then launched the proposal that would change everything: “I haven’t dinner either. I know a taquería near. If the company does not bother him …”

Manuel accepted. They walked together, the champion and the homeless, sharing streets, street lamps and a strange comfortable silence. In La Taquería, between Tacos de Suadero and Agua de Jamaica, they spoke like two old acquaintances. Manuel had been an accountant, had a family, a stable life in Culiacán. The economic crisis of 2008, unemployment, the migration failed to Guadalajara … everything was pushing, slowly, to the street.

Canelo listened without interrupting. I knew that the blows of life are not always seen. Sometimes they get inside.

When they finished dinner, Manuel insisted on paying their part with the same 100 pesos. Don Chuy, the Taquero, accepted with a pious lie: “Exactly that costs his order.” And Canelo respected the gesture without correcting it.

When he said goodbye, Canelo offered to take him back. Manuel, with a hurt leg of an accident without medical attention, he accepted. In the car, they talked about books, history, of Churchill. “Loneliness ages more than the street,” said Manuel. And Canelo felt that phrase would follow him for a long time.

The next day, Manuel woke up at a hotel. A room paid by Canelo, without promises, without conditions. Next to his bed, a box: new clothes, hygiene items … and three history books. “I heard what he said,” said Canelo’s note. “I hope you enjoy these titles.”

Days later, a call changed its course. Chepe, Canelo’s assistant, invited him to a dinner … and an interview. Canelo had a small publisher and thought that Manuel, with his passion for history, could contribute. The interview was rigorous. The editor, demanding. But Manuel was ready. And he was hired.

Today, Manuel Díaz no longer sleeps in a corner next to a gym. He works as an editorial assistant. Rent a small apartment. He has read again, to write … to live.

And that 100 peso ticket returned it weeks later, in the same taquería. “Not for money,” he said. “But for what it represents.”

Canelo accepted it with a smile. He gave him a simple watch. “To remember that it’s never too late to start over.”

Sometimes, a gesture is worth a thousand fights. Because in the dark alley of an indifferent city, two men found what neither fame nor hunger could buy: respect. Humanity.

And that, more than any belt, is what is really called being a champion.