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The bang heard around the boxing world last night was the sound of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez gaining the WBC middleweight title with a unanimous decision victory over now ex-four weight champion Miguel Cotto at Mandalay Bay Casino in America’s fight capital of Las Vegas.
Cotto started well, bouncing lightly on his toes to launch successful raiding tactics on the larger Alvarez. The Puerto Rican’s impressive boxing skills were on full display as the 35 year old as he fired off sharp jabs, combinations and body shots while maintaining good distance.
Alvarez showed very sharp reflexes, especially on defense, where his head movement caused Cotto to miss a lot of punches while he sought to gain proximity on his elusive foe.
By the middle rounds, the Mexican fighter was starting to land punches, particularly right hands upstairs and left hands downstairs as Cotto slowed a bit and couldn’t stay as much on the outside.
Alvarez, who appeared to be a couple of weight classes bigger than Cotto, was getting tagged plenty by his quicker rival, but was never bothered by the shots but it was clear that the smaller man was affected when Alvarez landed hard shots.
This was a thrilling fight with a lot of action and the judges at ringside favored the accuracy and more damaging work of Alvarez, who appeared to be outworked and outboxed by Cotto, to the tune of a 117-111, 119-109 and 118-110 UD.
At just 25 years of age, Alvarez, 46-1-1 (32), has already 48 pro bouts on his CV and has won the highest profile contest of his career.
Will 2016 see “Canelo” defend his newly minted title against his mandatory challenger, WBA/IBF champion Gennady Golovkin? If so, that should be a very interesting contest, regardless of whether or not Alvarez imposes a catchweight restriction on the widely feared “GGG”.
Despite putting one one of the best performances of his career, Cotto, 40-5 (33), loses for the first time in three years and will likely go back down to the light middleweight class where a brace of younger fighters will present new challenges.
The undercard featured a roaring firefight for the WBC super featherweight title between reigning champion Takashi Miura, 29-3-2 (22), and challenger Francisco Vargas, 23-0-1 (17).
Vargas started aggressively, zipping in shots that shook the southpaw champion in the very first round. Miura regrouped by the fourth round and was firmly in control, nailing the challenger with big left hands and flooring Vargas.
By the eighth, Vargas was cut, bloodied and battered as Miura looked to be on his way to a successful title defense but in the ninth frame, Vargas produced a stunning upset as he stopped the Tokyo man in savage fashion at 1:31.
Vargas wins a world title in his first attempt but won’t be able to mount a defense for quite some time as he recovers from his bruising encounter with Miura.
At England’s top venue, the cavernous Manchester Arena, fan favorite Anthony Crolla, 30-4-3 (12), also pulled off an upset as he came out of nowhere to KO WBA lightweight king Darleys Perez, 32-2-1 (20), in a rematch.
Crolla and Perez had been waging an entertaining contest with the Englishman appearing to have an edge over the Colombian champion but no one was expecting Crolla to drop Perez to his hands and knees with a spearing left hand to the ribs.
Newly crowned WBA champ Crolla could be looking at a massive domestic dustup with crosstown rival and WBO ruler Terry Flanagan in early 2016.
There was another Brit in action on Saturday, super middleweight Martin Murray, 32-3-1 (15), who challenged WBO champ Arthur Abraham, 44-4 (29), at Tui Arena in Hannover, Germany.
Murray’s experience was definitely more like that of Miguel Cotto’s rather than Anthony Crolla as Murray appeared to outwork and outbox the heavier Abraham but the champion was able to regroup and land heavier shots during the second half of the fight.
But unlike Cotto, at least Murray won on the scorecard of one judge, who had it 115-112 while the two other scores were in favor of Abraham by margins of 116-111, 115-112 in this clash of former middleweights.
Abraham could be headed for an interesting bout with legendary former middleweight and light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins, who at age 50 is looking for one last fight and given that he’s never contended for a super middleweight belt, a fight with Abraham would be ideal.
