Boxing icon Canelo Alvarez dropped fellow undisputed champion Jermell Charlo on route to the latest defence of his super-middleweight belts in Las Vegas last night.
The bout was advertised initially as the first battle of two undisputed champions in the four-belt era, with Charlo only being stripped of his WBO belt after having made the walk and being introduced as holding all of the belts at 154lb. But Alvarez showed in decisive fashion that there are weight classes for a reason as he effortlessly walked through his rival to retain his gold.
Two judges scored the bout 118-109 while the other went 119-108, in a performance that saw the Mexican declare that "nobody can beat this version of Canelo". He completely took control of proceedings from early on, before eventually felling his rival in the seventh with a series of big shots that forced him to take a knee.
Charlo managed to survive through the twelfth to take Alvarez to his third consecutive decision win, but at no point over the 36 minutes appeared to come close to grabbing control of the contest. With celebrities such as Floyd Mayweather and Dave Bautista in the capacity crowd at the T-Mobile Arena which was expected to garner a gate over $20million.
Mayweather was in attendance to help promote his young prospect Curmel Moton who defeated the unbeaten Ezequiel Flores on the undercard. And he embraced Charlo after the defeat in their post-fight press conference following the result, noting that Alvarez is a great champion.
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CompuBox statistics noted that Alvarez managed to land 134 of his 385 total punches, amounting to around 35 percent. It was almost double that of Charlo, who came in at 18 percent with 71 of his 398. This meant that Alvarez was averaging 32.1 punches thrown per round, to Charlo's 33.2 in a relatively low-octane affair.
Of those punches, the stastistics also indicate that Alvarez landed 78 power shots for a 40 percent rate of punches, with Charlo landing considerably less than half of that at 31 for a 27 percent accuracy rate. Alvarez landed 56 jabs to Charlo’s 40 at a considerably higher connection percentage 30 percent to 14 percent.
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"I'm great, I'm happy, thank you everybody for coming," Alvarez said after the fight. "I love you guys, I love you so much, I love my family, my friends who came from so far to support me, thank you so much, I love you all. I'm a strong fighter all the time with all the fighters, I'm a strong man.
"Nobody can beat this Canelo. We worked to be able to work the body, we know he's a great fighter, he knows how to move in the ring and we worked that in the gym for three months, in the mountain without my family. I still love boxing, I love boxing so f***ing much.
"Boxing is my life, boxing made me the person I am today, boxing is my life. That's why I love it so much and I love boxing so much because of my fans, too. Thank you." Alvarez now plans to take a break until Cinco de Mayo next year.
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