By Dan Ambrose: Floyd Mayweather (45-0, 26 KO’s) totally dominated WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) in winning a 12 round majority decision at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The final judges decision was 114-114, 116-112, 117-111. The judge that had it even at 114-114 appeared to be watching a completely different fight because there was no way that Canelo had earned a draw in this fight unless the judge had his eyes closed for the entire fight. It was a mismatch all the way through the fight.
Mayweather hit Canelo at will with shots in every round. The only time Canelo had any success was in the last 3 rounds when Mayweather stopped nailing him with right hands as often, but even then Canelo still wasn’t able to land much. He was missing like mad and getting clowned by Mayweather.
Canelo said after the fight that Mayweather had been running from him all night long. That’s not an accurate description of what took place in the fight because Mayweather was right in front of Canelo most of the time, but the problem was Canelo’s hand speed was too slow for him to land anything. He was just too slow. Canelo was like someone punching under water against a blazing fast athlete and he stood no chance.
Canelo said after the fight “I couldn’t catch him. He was very elusive. He was very intelligent. I did not know how to get to him. The 15 pounds were nullified. His punches were just hitting my arms. There was no solution tonight. I just couldn’t catch him.”
Like in his other fights, Canelo would go to the ropes to get a breather every now and then. He did this in the 7th round and Mayweather teed off on him and looked to be on the verge of getting a stoppage. Canelo came off the ropes and landed a few shots, but he continued to miss.
In the last 4 rounds, Canelo pushed hard to try and score a knockout, but he didn’t have the power needed to hurt Mayweather on the occasions when he was landing his punches. There wasn’t enough power, and Canelo was unable to put his punches together like he’d done in the past against the other welterweights that he’d faced.
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WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (27-0, 16 KO’s) clinched his way to a 12 round unanimous decision over challenger Lucas Matthysse (34-3, 32 KO’s). The final judges scores were 115-111, 114-112 and 114-112. Garcia got a way clinching on average of 8-10 times per round without losing points for his constant grabbing.
With all the clinching that Garcia was doing in every round, I couldn’t give him more than 3 rounds in the fight. Garcia should have lost at least 3-4 points for the clinching but the referee allowed it to go on without stop, so Garcia clinched for all he was worth for the entire fight.
Garcia also got credit for a bogus knockdown in the 11th round where he pulled Matthysse into the ropes with his hands and then hit him while he was tangled up. The referee totally blew the call and gave Garcia credit for a knockdown that in reality should have been a warning for Garcia for pulling Matthysse with his hands to get him to fall into the ropes.
In the 12th, the referee took a point off from Garcia for landing yet another low blow to Matthysse. I lost track of all the low blows that Garcia landed in the fight because it seemed like every round there were at least 2 or 3. The referee should have taken points off much earlier in the fight.
Due to all the clinching that Garcia did, it was a terrible fight to watch because the action essentially was Matthysse stalking and Garcia either running or clinching. It was pretty sad to watch.
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Other boxing action on the card:
Carlos Molina SD 12 Ishe Smith
Pablo Cesar Cano SD 10 Ashley Theophane
Lanell Bellows KO 1 Jordan Moore
Chris Pearson TKO 1 Joshua Williams
Ronald Gravil UD 8 Shujaa El Amin
Luis Arias UD 6 James Winchester
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