By Dan Ambrose: Photo: Sumio Yamada – Ryan Rhodes found out the hard way how powerful WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez’s punches were last Saturday night in a 12th round TKO loss to the tough Mexican fighter. Rhodes’ face was badly swollen after the fight and he never was for an instant competitive with then young 20-year-old Alvarez.
All of Rhodes’ experience didn’t help him a bit against Alvarez other than prolonging the inevitable. After the fight, Rhodes said “I was beaten by a superstar of world boxing.” But is Alvarez truly a superstar or was this just an indication that Rhodes wasn’t as good as some people thought he was going into the fight.
Alvarez fought well and showed good variety in throwing his combinations. However, he was still very hittable and looked wide open for shots when Rhodes was bold enough to try to throw. But Rhodes didn’t help himself by failing to attack Alvarez the way he needed to in order to win the fight. It was as if Rhodes didn’t want to have to pay the price to land his own shots. When Rhodes did land, Alvarez was quick to pay him back with much harder combinations and would really work Rhodes over.
It seemed that Rhodes opted to take the safer route of not punching to save himself the payback punishment. But from what I saw of the fight, Alvarez hardly looked like a superstar to me. What he looked like was a good young fighter facing a reluctant mediocre one who didn’t seem to want to take chances to try and win the fight.
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