The biggest boxing superstar, Canelo Alvarez, held a dominant show on Saturday night to limit the major fight of 2020, moving to a unanimous decision by winning the previous undefeated champion Callum Smith and winning the WBA, WBC and The Ring super-average titles. .
The dashboards read 119-109, 119-109 and 117-111, all for Alvarez.
In front of 15,000 fans (20% capacity) at San Antonio Alamodome, Alvarez (54-1-2, 36 KOs) followed Smith (27-1, 19 KOs), punishing him with a series of consistent bridges. , uppercuts and hooks for 12 rounds. Alvarez became the first unified champion in Mexico in super-middle history.
“I’m the best in the world,” Alvarez told DAZN through an interpreter. “In the first round, I tried to see what he brings, skills or whatever, but as you can see, I showed what I am.”
In the final rounds, the plot of the fight has shifted from who would win to whether Smith will survive Alvarez’s lethal blows and reach the distance.
Smith’s 6-foot-3 had a seven-inch-high advantage and an eight-inch advantage over Alvarez’s 5-foot-8, but it didn’t matter because Canelo was the big assailant Saturday night, eliminating the distance Smith prefers and hitting constantly with his fists on his head and body.
“He was the best fighter tonight,” Smith said. “He’s smart. He’s smart. He puts small traps on you and keeps you thinking. Before you know it, shut up. He’s a good fighter, but I’m just a little disappointed in myself. His jab was very good. I was a little surprised. “His defense was very good.”
Alvarez has now defeated two Smith brothers – eliminated his older brother Liam Smith as a junior middleweight in 2016 and now defeated Callum Smith as a super middleweight by a unanimous decision in 2020.
Alvarez, universally considered one of the world’s first two pounds boxers, the best-selling boxing fighter and already a four-division champion, has now won the title of The Ring magazine in three different weight classes. He got 43% of his fists and 57% of his fists, on CompuBox, in a complete performance, where his defense also shone. Smith got only 18% of his fists and 24% of his fists.
It was Alvarez’s first fight since breaking up with Golden Boy Promotions and DAZN after the contract disputes and he returned to the ring for the first time in 13 months as his own promoter with little rust in the ring.
Even at 30, with 57 professional fights, Canelo still looks firmly on top. He is still intimidated by fighters who often go into survival mode once they feel those blows, and it becomes difficult to find anyone in the super-middle division who can pose a real threat to Alvarez.
But Alvarez said after the fight that he feels great in the super-middle division, noting that he doesn’t want to fight with the ladder. His main goal is to unite all the belts in the division with Billy Joe Saunders who currently owns the WBO belt and Caleb Plant who owns the IBF belt. But the biggest persistent question is whether Alvarez will agree to a trilogy fight with Gennadiy Golovkin after two highly contested fights that ended in a draw and Alvarez’s win.
“I’m not running away from anyone. I just showed that I fought against the best,” Alvarez said. “If he takes the fight, I’ll take it. But I just showed that I’m fighting the best.”