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Boxer Canelo Álvarez spotted wearing Richard Mille

Canelo Álvarez, the undisputed super middleweight champion and one of the highest-paid athletes in combat sports, was recently photographed wearing the Richard Mille RM 52-01 Tourbillon Skull — a piece that stops conversations even in rooms full of serious watch collectors. The sighting confirms that Álvarez continues to push his personal collection well beyond the brand's already stratospheric standard offerings.

The Richard Mille RM 52-01 measures 45.70 mm × 38.40 mm and is constructed from grade-5 titanium and ceramic, materials chosen for their exceptional strength-to-weight ratio and scratch resistance. The movement at its heart is the manually wound Calibre RM52-01, a skeletonized tourbillon beating at 21,600 vph with a 48-hour power reserve. The defining feature is the three-dimensional 18k rose gold skull that occupies the dial plane entirely, its eye sockets and cranial architecture doubling as the movement's visual architecture — a piece of micro-sculpture requiring hundreds of hours of hand-finishing by Richard Mille artisans in Les Breuleux.

First introduced in the early 2010s, the RM 52-01 quickly became one of the Geneva-based manufacture's most iconic and controversial references. It polarized purists who viewed the skull motif as spectacle over substance, while simultaneously cementing Richard Mille's position as the definitive luxury watch brand for a new generation of ultra-high-net-worth collectors unbothered by traditional horological convention. Production numbers remain deliberately minuscule, with individual pieces allocated almost exclusively through the brand's private client network.

Canelo Álvarez has long been one of Richard Mille's most publicly visible celebrity clients, having been spotted in multiple RM references over the years. His affinity for the brand aligns naturally with Richard Mille's sponsorship presence in combat sports and motorsport. Wearing a $2.5 million tourbillon skull to a public appearance is, for Álvarez, simply on-brand — a fighter who earns nine figures per fight matching his wrist game accordingly.

On the secondary market, examples of the Richard Mille RM 52-01 Tourbillon Skull in titanium and ceramic trade at or above retail given their near-impossible allocation status. The $2.5 million retail price makes it one of the most valuable Richard Mille references outside fully bespoke commissions, and grey-market premiums are effectively theoretical — these pieces rarely surface publicly at any price.