There had been more than whispers that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez was well past his prime, but on Saturday night, he put such talk to rest — for now at least.
“Nobody can beat this Canelo,” Alvarez said after he thoroughly dominated Jermell Charlo to retain his unified super middleweight championship.
Alvarez (60-2-2) won by scores of 119-108, 118-109 and 118-109. The statistics were just as one-sided. Alvarez landed 42 punches to Charlo’s 11, almost all power punches for both boxers.
Photo: AP
Charlo, the unified junior middleweight champ, moved up two weight classes to take on Alvarez.
“I just felt like I wasn’t me in there,” Charlo said. “I don’t make excuses for myself, so it is what it is. I take my punches and roll with it.”
Even though Charlo (35-2-1) was the one moving up, he is 10cm taller than the 1.73m Alvarez and with a 6.35cm reach advantage.
That did not matter as Alvarez promised before the fight, saying his experience would prevail in the battle of 33-year-olds.
Now Charlo is ready to step back, saying he would love to take on 40-0 Terence Crawford, the reigning welterweight and super welterweight champion.
“I’ll move back to 154 [pounds, 70kg],” Charlo said. “This morning, I weighed like 172 or 173 pounds [78kg or 78.4kg]. I’ll grandfather myself into this. I’m proud of myself. He didn’t knock me out. He knocked all them other guys out. He hit me with some hard shots. I thought I got mine off.”
Entering this fight, Alvarez lost by unanimous decision to Dmitry Bivol in May last year, won by unanimous decision a year ago over past-his-prime Gennady Golovkin and then easily beat John Ryder in May on the scorecards.
His performance against Charlo figured to be a measuring stick on whether Alvarez could recreate some of his previous magic.
There is no doubt now that he can, but the question is whether the Mexican-born fighter can sustain it.
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