NEW YORK — Edgar Berlanga wasn’t exactly effusive in his praise of Hamzah Sheeraz.

Sure, Sheeraz will face one of The Ring’s top 10 super middleweight contenders in his first fight in a new weight class. And yes, the 6-foot-4 Brit will take a transatlantic trip to battle Berlanga in his hometown.

From Berlanga’s perspective, Sheeraz shouldn’t be applauded too much for his ambition. The Brooklyn native contends the only reason Sheeraz agreed to fight him next is because he has been promised by the event’s organizers, most notably Turki Alalshikh, that he will get a shot at undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez if he beats Berlanga on The Ring’s pay-per-view card, “Ring III,” at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens.

Alvarez has a difficult fight of his own scheduled for Sept. 13, a 12-round showdown with another four-division champion in undefeated Terence Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs). Mexico’s Alvarez (63-2-2, 39 KOs) has often expressed interest in fighting in England, though, and a bout with Sheeraz would be a marketable matchup in the UK if they win their upcoming contests.

Berlanga (23-1, 18 KOs), who has only lost to Alvarez, is confident he will prevent Sheeraz (21-0-1, 17 KOs) from earning that career-changing opportunity against one of boxing’s biggest stars.

“Imma be honest,” Berlanga told The Ring recently, “they only doing this because they told him, 'If you beat him, if you get by him, we giving you Canelo.’ So, he had no option but to take it. That’s what I was just telling him [at our press conference]. I said, 'You ain’t have no choice but to take this fight.'

“He said, ‘Oh, I’m coming to your hometown. I’m coming to your backyard to fight you.’ I said, ‘You was forced to do this [expletive], so you could try to get that Canelo fight, because they promised you that fight.’ But other than that, I’m going in there, I’m looking to hurt him.”

Berlanga, 27, is slightly more than a 2-1 favorite over Sheeraz, 25, according to DraftKings.

Those odds aside, Sheeraz expects to feel fresher and stronger because he won’t need to shrink his body down to the middleweight limit of 160 pounds anymore. Sheeraz also sustained a fracture in his left hand early in his last fight —

a questionable, 12-round split draw with WBC middleweight champ Carlos Adames (24-1-1, 18 KOs) on Feb. 22 at ANB Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Berlanga, ranked No. 9 among The Ring’s 168-pound contenders, has fought in the super middleweight division for the past five years.