Just three days after Mexican boxing icon Canelo Alvarez won the WBC super middleweight title in Riyadh by unanimous decision, more than a year after losing it, the brand world is talking about the 36-year-old again. Not because of the belt, but because of Kalshi’s latest campaign. Staying the favourite no matter what, even if it means coping with your noisy neighbours.

Last week, Kalshi announced a multiyear partnership with Canelo Alvarez, who joins the prediction-market platform as a brand ambassador and equity investor. According to Forbes, he turned down a cash endorsement and took a stake worth more than $10 million at Kalshi’s current valuation. He is Kalshi’s sixth athlete signing since Bryson DeChambeau became its first long-term ambassador in January. 

The business strategy is the audience. Kalshi’s head of growth partnerships told Forbes that Canelo reaches a Spanish-speaking audience the company has never marketed to before. A big move to connect with people who are passionate about boxing, timed so that Kalshi’s logo was on his trunks in Riyadh.

The one-minute film was created by the agency Es Muy Good and directed by Walid Labri, with Oscar-winning cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who won the Academy Award for Oppenheimer and also shot Interstellar with Christopher Nolan.

That choice was no accident. The cinematography is central to the piece, showing the famous “work that nobody sees”: the grit, effort and consistency that only a pro boxer can deliver. More than a commercial, the film plays as a piece of cinema with a sense of humour, and as a real-life journey too.

Ask a Millennial boxer who shaped them early on, and Rocky Balboa is probably up there on the pedestal. Strangely enough, a fictional character forged and inspired a whole generation of boxers worldwide. Rocky represents the journey of thousands of athletes who make it to the big stage: the humble backgrounds, the relentless grit, the lack of professional equipment, the never-give-up attitude and, above all, the long and winding road to success.

The Rocky saga showed the way, but boxers like Canelo Alvarez made it real and tangible.

The campaign’s maxim is to stay the favourite, which is not as simple as it reads. Many professional athletes describe how climbing to the top was hard and required a lot of sacrifices, but staying on top is another game entirely. What separates an average athlete from a GOAT is the capacity to sustain that level for many years. Messi, Jordan, Brady, you name it. Every hero’s journey describes the climb, but few describe how to behave once you reach the destination.

Canelo is living that second chapter. At 36, after more than a year away from the ring and after losing all his titles, he beat the unbeaten champion Christian Mbilli, a boxer five years younger, on all three scorecards. The film makes the same point: a relentless pursuit of perfection and a whole life centred on discipline and commitment. Canelo and Kalshi exemplify it perfectly in this new campaign.