América vs. Chivas is Mexico's biggest game, but can El Clásico Nacional beat Canelo Alvarez on fight night?

Does the fighter from Guadalajara still have it? Or will it be revealed Saturday just how far the legend has fallen in the pecking order? On Mexican Independence Day weekend, sports fans across a continent will tune in to find out — but they’ll have a choice.

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Mexican boxing legend Canelo Alvarez is going head-to-head with Terence “Bud” Crawford, but the fight will go head-to-head with the most important match in Mexican soccer: The rivalry game between Club América and Chivas de Guadalajara.

This year’s Clásico Nacional pits an undefeated América against a struggling Chivas, but the game almost always delivers drama and strong play. Chivas have underperformed their underlying analytics this season and are hoping a resurgence begins with a road rivalry win.

Mexican soccer officials saw the clash between the match and the beloved local son’s fight happening for weeks. El Clásico was initially scheduled for Friday night, allowing soccer to take center stage before Saturday's fight.

But Televisa, Mexico’s largest TV company, owns Club América in addition to its TV networks, and after executives failed to find a rights agreement to put the fight on over-the-air TV in Mexico, the rivalry matchup was moved to Saturday night at 9 p.m. local time/11 p.m. ET. It will be shown on Canal 5, a broadcast network also owned by Televisa, in Mexico and Univision in the U.S. while the boxing match is available exclusively on Netflix in both countries.

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It is the first time in 16 years that one of Alvarez’s fights won’t be on broadcast TV in Mexico. The fighter himself said he hopes future fights won’t be behind a paywall, and, in an interview with boxing site Izquierdazo said “bad communication” led to Saturday’s bout being subscriber-exclusive.

The decision to move América’s showdown with Chivas looks like a logical one. Coming out of an international break, both teams will be reintegrating players — some of whom returned to training only Thursday after suiting up for their national teams. América also has consistently run into conflict with local officials who govern the borough where the Estadio Ciudad de los Deportes sits. Their temporary home while the Estadio Azteca is being remodeled, the stadium sits in a neighborhood, and the local mayor has ordered matches be played behind closed doors after perceived infractions by the temporary tenants.

Getting the match played in front of a sold-out crowd, and putting it at a prime time for the Mexican and Mexican American TV audiences took priority. Even the fact that the game is being played on Independence weekend feels like progress.

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The NFL kicked off its season last week with the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles playing a rivalry game against the Dallas Cowboys, one of the most marketable teams in the league. The joke in Mexican soccer circles for years has been that Liga MX often kicks off its season with the most uninteresting matches: This tournament kicked off with provincial club Puebla hosting Atlas, a team that missed the playoffs, in front of 11,433 fans.

In addition to putting big matches like América-Chivas on a holiday weekend, the league has worked to package Clásicos together or sometimes moves the spotlight so a critical game is the only one being played at a certain time of the weekend — tactics used by leagues for decades but that still feel fresh in Liga MX.

Yet, it’s also difficult not to see El Clásico Nacional switching to Saturday — and kicking off at a time that almost certainly will overlap with the fight — as a confrontation with Canelo. The ratings could prove whether or not the appetite for traditionally huge soccer matches is as huge as it once was.

Mexican soccer may not like what it sees. Like boxing and other sports properties around the world, Mexican soccer increasingly is searching for the best way to deliver its product to viewers while still extracting maximum revenue. Rights deals for Liga MX are agreed by team-by-team, rather than in a league-wide deal like most leagues around the world. That has led to some teams — including Chivas — going with partners that put matches behind paywalls on streaming services.

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After decades of popularity and being the biggest game in town, Mexican soccer increasingly is having to ask itself how to get in front of fans and how to convince them to go to the stadium.

Boxing has its own questions in Mexico, with the constant quest to find the superstar that will follow Canelo. But the Jalisco native, whose trainer Eddy Reynoso is a mega-fan of Chivas’ Guadalajara rival Atlas, remains a huge draw.

For now, it appears Liga MX is eager to size Canelo up and face off with him directly. The tale of the tape shows two formidable opponents squaring off, with neither likely to land a knockout blow. Fans will split screen, find highlights and work out ways to consume both. By forcing fans to choose or to get creative, though, Mexican soccer looks like an old fighter, getting into the ring looking confident but internally hoping they’ve still got it and can hang for the full 12 rounds.