(Photo credit: Sumio Yamada) By Dan Ambrose; This may go over the heads of some boxing fans but here is what I believe: WBC junior middleweight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez likely would have been jabbed silly and easily beaten by WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout last Saturday night if not for the semi-open scoring at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
The World Boxing Association unknowingly gave the red-haired Canelo a huge advantage by having the open scoring system in place for this fight because it seems to favor guys with more power than the lighter punching guys. Canelo was out-punched in every round of the fight, and even in the round where he knocked Trout down in the 7th.
With the semi-open scoring system the scores were read to the fighters after the 4th and 8th rounds. Already the judges had Trout behind in the fight after the 4th round, causing him to have to change his game plan from a boxer to that of a slugger, and that’s not a style that he’s good.
Knowing that he had a lead in the fight, all Canelo had to do was sit back and play defense and look to land an occasional big shot to catch the eyes of the judges. I still felt that Canelo gave away every fround from the 8th until the final round because he wasn’t throwing enough punches and was fighting passively off the ropes.
Normally fighters like that aren’t given rounds by judges, especially when they’re getting out-landed like Canelo was last Saturday night, but these judges gave Canelo rounds with that style.
I think Canelo will continue to use the semi-open scoring in his future fights and it’ll give him a huge advantage over his opponents because he’ll only have to fight hard enough to build up an early lead and then he can rest – and believe me he needs lots of rest breaks – in the last three-fourths of the fight with his lead. Given that Canelo will have an advantage in popularity against his future opponents except for Floyd Mayweather Jr., I can’t see any of his opponents being able to say no to the open scoring for the fight.
If they don’t agree to it then they probably won’t get the fight. It’s as easy as that. I can see Canelo being a world beater with the open scoring because it’ll enable him to fight hard for one part of the fight and then rest in the second part with a lead. Personally, I think it’s the worst thing that anyone could ever come up with for the sport of boxing, but I seriously doubt the WBC will do away with it because it worked for Canelo and will likely continue to work for him.
I had Canelo losing by a lopsided because he looked tired throughout the second half of the fight and he didn’t fight hard enough to win the fight. I’m sorry, but landing three hard shots per round isn’t enough to win a round when you’ve tagged much more by your opponent. Trout easily won the fight and it’s pretty sad that scoring was so off from what happened in the ring.
Canelo won’t be able to land a fight with Mayweather Jr. with open scoring. He can forget all about that because Mayweather won’t let his game be altered by knowing what some judges are scoring the fight.
Here are my scores from last Saturday night:
R1: 10-9 Trout
R2 10-9 Canelo
R3 10-9 Trout
R4 10-9 Trout
R5 10-9 Trout
R6 10-9 Trout
R7 10-8 Canelo
R8 10-9 Trout
R9 10-9 Trout
R10 10-9 Trout
R11 10-9 Trout
R12 10-9 Trout
Total 117-110 Trout
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