Eleider Alvarez vs. Robert Berridge results

By Boxing News - 07/29/2016 - Comments

alvarez

(Photo credit: Dave Nadkarni/Premier Boxing Champions) By Jim Dower: Unbeaten #1 WBC light heavyweight contender Eleider Alvarez (20-0, 10 KOs) stayed in position for title shot contention with a one-sided 10 round unanimous decision victory on Friday night against replacement opponent Robert Berridge (27-5-1, 21 KOs) at the Centre Videotron, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The fight was televised on Premier Boxing Champions on Spike TV.

The final judges’ scores were 99-90, 98-92 and 98-92.

It took Alvarez a long time to really get untracked in this fight, as he seemed to be confused by the little bit of movement that Berridge was using. Berridge was moving around in slow circles and coming forward to land straight left hands to the head. Alvarez was good at countering him, but he wasn’t landing nearly as many shots as he should have. Berridge was able to come forward and hit Alvarez clean with left hands all night long. Berridge isn’t fast by any means, and yet he was able to connect with his shots to the head of Alvarez before he could react properly.

The southpaw Berridge was brought in as a replacement opponent for the 32-year-old Alvarez after the originally scheduled opponent Chad Dawson pulled out of the fight card in the last week due to an injury. Berridge surprisingly fought well for a replacement opponent. He was able to frequently land left hands to the head of the plodding Alvarez.

In the 10th, Berridge was cut over his right eye. However, he landed a lot of left hands to the head of Alvarez, but he lacked the power to hurt him. Alvarez appeared to have Berridge in distress at one point after hitting him with a right to the body. If Alvarez had been able to step it up a notch, he might have scored a knockout in the 10th, because Berridge was clearly in trouble after getting hit with a series of body punches. For some reason, Alvarez couldn’t get out of 2nd gear to step it up in a fast enough manner to get Berridge out of there.

With the ease that the 31-year-old Berridge was able to hit Alvarez with left hands tonight, I don’t think Alvarez has any chance against WBC champion Adonis Stevenson.

All in all, it wasn’t an impressive performance from Alvarez. He was too easy to hit, too slow, and too one dimensional. Alvarez failed to jab as much as he should have, and his punching power wasn’t enough to bother Berridge. Alvarez will likely be challenging WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson next. With the way Alvarez fought tonight, I don’t give him any chance of beating Stevenson. Alvarez, 32, is too up there in age to hope that he can improve enough to be able to unseat Stevenson. Alvarez is pretty much the finished product at this point in his career. He would have to go into the Stevenson fight with his limited skills as they are and hope that he can somehow pull off a miracle. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

You have to wonder what sanctioning bodies like the World Boxing Council are thinking when the rank limited fighters like Eleider Alvarez at No.1 in their rankings at light heavyweight, because he’s a guy that arguably should be ranked well below some of the other contenders that the WBC has ranked underneath him in their 175lb rankings. For example, the WBC has Artur Beterbiev at No.3, Andre Ward No.4, Vyacheslav Shabranskyy at No.5, Oleksandr Gvozdyk No.6, Joe Smith Jr. No.2, and Jean Pascal at No.14. I think all of those fighters would handily beat Alvarez.

I feel that the WBC needs to do a better job of ranking fighters in all of their divisions, because a lot of the rankings they have make little sense to me.

Eleider Alvarez is a decent fringe level contender in my opinion. I think he should be ranked at No.15 with the WBC rather than No.1. The champion that Alvarez should be targeting should be the WBA World 175lb champ Juergen Braehmer. That’s a guy that Alvarez would at least have a chance at beating. Against Stevenson, Alvarez doesn’t have any chance at all in my view. I think he’s nowhere near the same talent level as Stevenson despite being six years younger than the 38-year-old champion.

Other boxing results on the card:

Sebastien Bouchard RTD 4 Alejandro Herrera
Oscar Rivas TKO 3 Jeremiah Karpency
Immanuwel Aleem draw 8 Demond Nicholson