Canelo Alvarez won a convincing, unanimous decision over Miguel Cotto on Saturday night in Las Vegas to claim the vacant WBC World middleweight belt and become the lineal middleweight champion.
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Judges scored the bout widely in favor of the 25-year-old Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 knockouts), 117-111, 119-109 and 118-110, but the living legend Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) managed to keep it competitive throughout the bout.
The Puerto Rican star proved again that he’s a warrior but had little answer for the power of Alvarez, which was on display in the form of lead right hands, uppercuts and hooks for most of the fight. This was a fight between boxing’s biggest rivalry.
In the final round, Alvarez landed a few sledgehammer shots early to open a cut over Cotto’s left eye.
“I’m not afraid of anybody”, Alvarez continued through a translator.
In 2013, Alvarez relinquished the WBC title when he lost to Floyd Mayweather, so Golden Boy Promotions had to call him something. After paying Golovkin $800,000 to step aside so he could fight Alvarez, he wasn’t going to dig any deeper into his wallet despite his $10 million payday for the bout.
Cotto put in an admirable effort but did not conduct a post-fight interview following the drama surrounding the sanctioning fee on Tuesday, in which he was stripped of his belt by the WBC.
Canelo is known as a fighter willing to take risks, and one of the first questions he faced following his win was about a potential matchup with GGG.
The fight closed with Canelo and Cotto trading shots in the middle of the ring.
Fans of Gennady Golovkin would argue that, but Cotto vs. Alvarez just might be the best matchup of the year in boxing. Alvarez weighed exactly that the day before the fight, but after rehydrating appeared much larger in the ring than Cotto, who was 153 1/2 pounds at the official weigh-in.
Lee Haskins is also on the undercard against Randy Caballero for the IBF bantamweight title in another hard fight. I think that would be a good fight for him. I’m sure Freddie being so smart will have him box a bit, moving a bit, keeping Canelo off balance and at bay and take advantage of those cement feet. Yahoo Sports says, “Cotto actually out-threw Alvarez, 629-484, but that was largely due to an inordinate amount of jabs”. We didn’t lose the fight by that much.
Fans have been waiting a long time for this bout, and both boxers has expressed confidence that they will be the one standing victorious at the end of tonight’s fight, however, there can be only one victor.
In the ring, Canelo said he would “fight [GGG] right now”.
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“I don’t need a title”, Cotto said.
