Jerry Jones hosts Canelo Alvarez in Texas, and would love a return visit

Jerry Jones can reel off a list of impressive business moves he’s made under the gun of a deadline.

His 1989 purchase of the Dallas Cowboys, his double-down investment during a lending crisis to finish construction of his $1.15 billion palace, AT&T Stadium, and his persuasive handling of the Rams’ return to Los Angeles.

Saturday, Jones will host the third boxing match at his stadium, with an estimated 40,000 expected for the junior-middleweight title fight between Mexico’s popular Canelo Alvarez and England’s Liam Smith.

Although Smith (23-0-1, 13 knockouts) is the World Boxing Organization champion riding a streak of eight consecutive knockouts, he is not the opponent most want Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) to see.

Unbeaten three-belt middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) was the mandatory champion for Alvarez, 26, in May, but instead of making that bout, promoter Oscar De La Hoya relinquished Alvarez’s World Boxing Council belt to Golovkin and said they’d fight one year from now, in September 2017.

“We’re gonna be in the hunt,” Jones said of bringing Alvarez-Golovkin to AT&T Stadium after he offered $25 million in 2009 to host the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao fight that was delayed by negotiating acrimony and wound up being a snoozer at MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 2015.

“If [Alvarez-Golovkin] still has the appeal, if they keep winning, and the fight still has all the things that you want … we will be very aggressive in getting the fight.”

De La Hoya never discussed with Jones his decision to pause a Alvarez-Golovkin fight. If he had, perhaps Alvarez-Golovkin would be Saturday night’s fight.

In a three-hour talk on several topics with the Los Angeles Times and Boston Herald in his private suite, Jones counted the numerous lessons he’s learned about striking a deal at the peak of interest.

“There’s something magical when the time feels right, when it’s in the cross-hairs,” Jones said. “You better pull the trigger, because things have a way of getting out of kilter and never coming to bear and those things can be everything from God’s will to economic conditions to fickleness. That’s not just in boxing.

“Wait around until it feels a little better and you may never get a chance to hit that caboose again. You better grab that damn thing.”

Eric Gomez, the president of De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, said Friday that Jones’ advice would have been appreciated, but not accepted.

De La Hoya instead resolved to pursue another vision for Alvarez, placing him in major showcase bouts in Las Vegas, Texas and New York this year, angling to heighten the anticipation for Golovkin, 34, with a better prepared Alvarez, 26.

Jones recalled when he bought the Cowboys nearly 30 years ago “most every bank in town had been broke. Buildings were empty, construction had stopped. [Dallas] looked like a nuclear bomb had hit.”

He was in the seventh day of a fact-finding visit and stopped by then-owner Bum Bright’s office.

Bright told Jones, “Jerry, I’ve got to get on with it. I’d like you to go home tonight and decide if you’re going to buy this team. If not, I can’t wait any longer.”

Jones’ advisors warned of lawsuits, of massive financial losses, but after retreating to his hotel room and sleeping on it, he returned to Bright’s office with words scratched on a small piece of paper: “150 million! All in!”

Bright looked at the paper, extended his right hand and told Jones, “You just bought the Dallas Cowboys.”

Jones said his family will never sell the team that’s now valued at an NFL-high $4.2 billion.

“You wait around for your dream bus coming around, and just about the time you think you’ll catch it, it’s gone,” Jones said.

Similarly, when Jones was waiting on aggravating details to settle so he could pursue a new stadium, a Charlotte banker previously involved with a stadium effort in Miami boarded a flight and met him for a glass of iced tea and some advice.

“When those things hit — political, economic, location — you can live a lifetime and never get there again,” the banker told Jones. “Quit fooling around over peanuts.”

Said Jones: “That can be applied to so many things. If it fits, you live with it. If it’s meaningful for you, and you don’t get it put to bed, you can blame yourself. Not the circumstances.”

Rebuffed by Alvarez, Golovkin scored a fifth-round technical knockout of England’s Kell Brook Sept. 10. He and his promoter, Tom Loeffler, paid a visit to Jones on a Cowboys game weekend last year.

Both Alvarez and Golovkin are expected to fight on separate cards again in the late fall, then again separately in the spring before their possible Texas-sized showdown that would likely shatter the state record of nearly 60,000 fans that watched Julio Cesar Chavez Sr.-Pernell Whitaker at San Antonio’s Alamodome in 1993.

“An [Alvarez] fight with Golovkin would sell a lot more tickets,” than Saturday’s, “would break the record for any fight in Texas” Loeffler said. “Great venue for a great fight.”

Jones this week has found appreciation in the spirit of Alvarez, Smith and the other boxers on Saturday’s card.

“They go out there and sell that, ‘I’m going to absolutely empty my bucket for you,’” Jones said. “They are so appreciative of literally getting the chance to show they can do it. It’s one of the purest professional presentations of an athlete that you’ll see — like actors on Broadway doing their lines on the street to get you to come in and watch.

“I do oil and gas, and a lot of it. I do real estate, and a lot of it. I will never make 1 red cent on boxing. There is not 1 ounce of me that is thinking commercially about fighting, except for making it work … to have enough juice to go again.”

Like it or not, Jones and everyone else must be consoled by the wisdom that patience is a virtue.

BOXING

Main event: Liam Smith (23-0-1, 13 KOs) vs. Canelo Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KOs) for Smith’s WBO junior-middleweight belt

Where: AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas

When: Saturday, pay-per-view broadcast begins at 6 p.m. Pacific

Television: HBO pay-per-view, $59.95

Undercard: Willie Monroe (20-2, six KOs), Rochester, N.Y., vs. Gabriel Rosado (23-9, 13 KOs), Philadelphia, middleweights; Joseph Diaz Jr. (21-0, 12 KOs), South El Monte, vs. Andrew Cancio (17-3-2, 13 KOs), Blythe, featherweights; Diego De La Hoya (15-0, nine KOs), Mexicali, vs. Luis Orlando Del Valle (22-2, 16 KOs), Puerto Rico.

lance.pugmire@latimes.com

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