On Saturday, for the first time in a decade, Canelo Alvarez will fight outside Mexico or the United States' Southwest. The last time he fought on the East Coast, it was in 2008 in Miami. Canelo looked different. That was three weight divisions ago. His hair -- helped by his brown trunks and shoes that complemented the color atop his head -- appeared redder than it does now. Three years into his career, the baby-faced, 18-year-old Canelo had yet to even sign with Golden Boy Promotions. When that contract came, about two years from that night in Miami, Oscar De La Hoya envisioned something great.

"We believe Saul is going to be a star," De La Hoya said, still calling him by his birth name and not by what's placed him among the few athletes referred to by a single name. "He's already a big attraction... in Mexico and we're going to do everything we can to help him become a champion and a star in the United States."

This Saturday, when Canelo fights Rocky Fielding at Madison Square Garden, he returns to the East Coast as boxing's superstar. And for the first time in its long history, a Mexican fighter is one of boxing's most marketable fighters. Add his record-breaking DAZN contract and Canelo may well be the most powerful, too.

To appreciate what this means, we must look back at the best fighter in Mexico's history: "El Gran Campeón Mexicano" Julio Cesar Chavez.

Even today, Chavez draws a crowd. Photo and autograph seekers rush toward him, more often than crowds do to even most active boxers. Most of those who race toward Chavez speak Spanish. Inside the boxing world, Chavez is a living legend. A giant. Outside of it -- at least, on this side of the U.S.-Mexico border -- Chavez can get lost among the crowd. This was true then, during his fighting career, and now.

"Chavez seems willing to die out there and there aren't too many guys left like that," Larry Merchant told KO Magazine. "He's just so goddamned tough."

But Chavez's toughness was never in question. Rather, it was his inability to take the respect he earned from that toughness and turn it into a popular appeal among crowds in the United States.

Since Chavez's fighting days, the era of great Mexican boxers that followed him have increasingly communicated in English. Even if they relied on translators to help, boxers like Juan Manuel Márquez, Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales all spoke English. More recently, other Latino boxers have done the same, specifically Miguel Cotto -- who fought at Madison Square Garden 10 times, half on the eve of New York City's National Puerto Rican Day Parade.

Canelo can speak English but, for whatever reason, chooses to communicate in Spanish. Unlike boxers before him, especially Chavez, this decision hasn't hampered Canelo's marketability.

"What worries me is fighting and training and I think people like that more than talking," Canelo said about his communicating almost exclusively in Spanish.

Eric Gomez, president of Golden Boy Promotions, agrees with Canelo while also stating that their fighter continues to work on his English.

Canelo Alvarez is fighting at the legendary Madison Square Garden in New York City for the first time on Saturday. Theo Wargo/Getty Images

"He's the only fighter right now who directly has sponsors," Gomez says of Canelo. "His style of fighting, the way he is, the fact that he's clean, all that is better than the language... He's disciplined, clean, educated and that's more important than language."

Canelo does, in fact, have important sponsorships. And part of the reason is the changing demographics of both the U.S. and boxing's fan base.

In the early 1980s, when Chavez began boxing, according to the Pew Research Center, Hispanics accounted for a little over 6 percent of the U.S. population. Most of that Hispanic population lived along the U.S.-Mexico border -- the southwest that was once the northern parts of Mexico. By 2016, that number increased to almost 18 percent. A study from the U.S. Census, released earlier this year, projects that number will increase to over 21 percent by 2030.

With this change comes the rising purchasing power from U.S. Hispanics, now over $1.6 trillion per year, according to Nielsen data and analytics. And while not every Hispanic speaks Spanish, the increase of Spanish-language radio and television reflect this change. According to Forbes, the first full-time Spanish language radio station launched in 1945; today, there are over 500 radio stations that broadcast exclusively in that language. And considering the strong boxing history and tradition across Latin America -- and that a 2017 Washington Post-UMass Lowell poll stated that 61 percent of U.S. Hispanics consider themselves boxing fans, compared with just 17 percent of whites -- the sport has also felt these changes.