Saul Alvarez decisions 39-year-old Lovemore N’dou, but looks horrible

By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten Saul Alvarez (35-0-1, 26 KO’s) failed to impress last night with a 12 round unanimous decision win over 39-year-old Lovemore N’dou (48-12-2, 31 KO’s) at the Estadio Beto Avila, Veracruz, Veracruz, Mexico. Alvarez, 20, clearly won the fight but he took a lot of head shots in the fight and looked a lot like a plodder as he came forward. In looking at how easily N’dou was able to land hard flush shots throughout the fight, it has me wondered whether Alvarez is already showing early signs of deterioration form this fight and his earlier fights while coming up.

Alvarez has no defensive skills whatsoever and he’s taken a lot of punishment to the head in many of his previous fights. Last night, he looked lethargic and his reflexes weren’t good in winning the fight. I thought for a second that Alvarez may have been sick, but he’s shown the same lack of defense and reflexes in his last couple of fights. It was much worse against N’dou, though. Alvarez won by the judges scores of 119-109, 120-108 and 120-108.

Alvarez was defending his newly created made belt called the WBC Silver light middleweight title against N’dou, who is little more than a 40ish light welterweight. Basically, Alvarez was fighting someone two divisions smaller than him in N’dou, and yet he wasn’t able to hurt him and was tagged all night long by right hands from N’dou. I think Alvarez’s handlers need to somehow keep him at welterweight for as long as possible, because I worry he could get hurt if he’s forced to fight a real junior middleweight and not 40-year-old former light welterweight or welterweight.

For Alvarez, this was his second fight in a row against a 39-year-old fighter and I think it’s time they start putting him in with younger guys unless they’re trying to hide something about him. In watching how poor Alvarez looked on defense, I can’t see the guy being a future star other than a paper champion. He’ll do well as long as he’s carefully matched like he’s been recently, but put him in with a good fighter and he’s going to have problems.