Liam Smith calls for ‘respect’ from judges at weigh-in with Saul Alvarez

“Saul Alvarez may have won the fight but didn’t have it all his own way”.

The Mexican claimed the Briton’s WBO light-middleweight world title with a destructive ninth-round stoppage in front of 55,000 fans at the AT&T Stadium in Dallas.

Canelo Alvarez and his Saturday opponent, Liam Smith, each weighed in at the junior-middleweight limit 154 pounds Friday.

Frank Warren is backing his fighter Liam Smith to step up to the occasion in Texas on Saturday night and cause an upset against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.

“I will fight GGG and I will beat GGG, but I will not be forced into the ring”, Alvarez said then.

Smith came to Texas as the beltholder but he is leaving the Lone Star state without the belt as the sustained bludgeoning he received at the hands of “Canelo” put an end to the fight in just over 9 rounds.

“I’m 26 years old and I’m the best at this time, long live Mexico”.

It was only going to be a matter of time before Alvarez got his knockout.

Alvarez has been trading smack talk with Golovkin for quite some time and is apparently set to face him in the fall of next year.

Alvarez in May stopped Smith’s friend Amir Khan in six rounds, when two of the three judges oddly had him winning despite many observers believing Khan should have led. So I’ve taken this fight because it’s an opportunity to make a name for myself and establish myself as one of the best fighters, pound for pound, in the world.

“He was too good and skillful, and I was too slow tonight”. Golovkin became the mandatory challenger, but Alvarez promoter Oscar De La Hoya wanted to have his biggest attraction fight an interim bout.

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The Liverpool fighter won the belt by stopping john Thompson a year ago and has since made two successful defences but has his work cut out tonight. “I’m going to win this fight”. You can’t blame Smith for not being able to punch with the same authority that Canelo was hitting with, because it was a natural middleweight against a natural junior middleweight last night. I felt he was very strong in the beginning so I had to put the body work and felt he would dwindle, that’s how I did my job. It is a fight that many expect Canelo to win handily but given the fact that it seemed too hard a task to make weight there might be some complications.