Alvarez got another knockdown down in the eighth round when nailing Smith with a left to the solar plexus that put the champion on his haunches gasping for air.
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It was a hard night for the 28-year-old, who returns to Liverpool without his WBO crown.
“Canelo was too good today”, he admitted. No excuses, but my timing was so off.
The dejected Liverpudlian added: ‘I was slow and had no timing to even make him think twice. I never landed to to the body like I wanted to.
“I felt he was very strong in the beginning, so I felt I had to put that bodywork in so that slowly he would dwindle and I did my job”, said Alvarez, who connected with a left to the body and a right to the side of Smith’s head that knocked the champion down in the seventh.
Asked about that match-up – and whether he was ducking the hard-hitting Kazakh – Alvarez said: “I fear no one”.
“I want to thank everybody that’s here”. I thought Smith fought well in the 4th round when he let his hands go. I started controlling him.
Alvarez recalled I started going after him, but in the second round I hurt my hand. “I could only use my right hand sparingly”.
The finish came in the ninth when Alvarez threw a left hook upstairs and followed that up with a big punch to Smith’s kidney area collapsing the champion for the referee to step in and stop the fight. Canelo, though, told HBO’s Max Kellerman that the onus is on “GGG” to help make boxing’s biggest “Big drama show”. The t-shirt Canelo Alvarez wore as he entered the arena (more on that later) was downright hysterical, and throughout the fight it was impossible not to notice how massive Canelo is, which only confirms that the plan to gradually build him into a legitimate 160-pounder is a smokescreen. “I didn’t want to say anything because I respect my rivals. We’ll have to go back and see what I learned from it, but I loved it all apart from the end result”.
Golovkin is a 34-year-old based in Santa Monica, California and the Kazakhstan native has said he wants the fight as soon as possible. “I’m the best at this moment in time”.
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Saul “Canelo” Alvarez extended his professional boxing record to 48-1-1 with a devastating ninth round knockout of undefeated English middleweight Liam Smith on Saturday night in Dallas. Cotto is a good fighter, but don’t think he’s got the size or the youth to beat Andrade.
