Saul “Canelo” Alvarez reaffirmed his super mid-dleweight supremacy on Saturday with a devastat-ing unanimous-decision victory over Jermell Charlo to retain his undisputed world title.
In a battle of undisputed champions, Mexico’s Alvarez knocked down Charlo in the seventh round as he defended his WBO, WBC, WBA and IBF belts, becoming the first to defend all four for a third straight time.
Judges Max DeLuca and David Sutherland scored it 118-109 and Steve Weisfeld saw it 119-108 for Alvarez, who was the aggressor from the start.
He sent Charlo, the undisputed super welter-weight world champion, to the canvas for just the second time in his career in the seventh, rocking him with a right to the temple then following up with an uppercut that had the American sagging to a knee.
“You know, I worked all the fight to go in the body,” Alvarez said. “And then I changed the punch and that’s what happened.”
lvarez said he’d planned to attack Charlo’s body, and he went after it early, digging in from the right and left.
“We worked for that, we worked to work in the body,” Alvarez said. “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.
“Three months in the mountains without my family, without everything. But I still love boxing,” the 33-year-old star said. “Boxing made me the person I am today. Boxing is my life.”
Charlo, fighting above the 154-pound limit for the first time, never found an attacking rhythm as Alvarez dictated the pace, effectively cut off the ring and consistently backed his opponent up.
Alvarez improved to 60-2-2 with 39 knockouts and backed up his claim that a high-altitude training camp in the California mountains had restored the fitness and strength that seemed to be lacking in two unimpressive victories over Gennady Golovkin and John Ryder since his failed foray at light heavyweight against Dmitry Bivol.
Alvarez, now looking toward a title defence next May to coincide with the Mexican Cinco de Mayo holiday, said it didn’t matter that he didn’t get a knockout.—AFP
