By Matt Lieberman: Canelo Alvarez beat down Callum Smith in a clinical fashion in a 12 round unanimous decision to capture his fourth-division world title on DAZN in the headline event tonight in San Antonio, Texas.
Smith was reeling in the championship rounds from the beating he was taking from Canelo, and chose to use movement to survive. It looked bad on Smith’s part that he failed to let his hands go in rounds 11 and 12 to get the win, but it’s understandable why he played.
Smith’s trainer Joe Gallagher spoke of wanting to stop the fight after the ninth round due to the punishment he was taking from Canelo.
Smith did have his moments in the fight, but he wasn’t able to take advantage of the rare times that he laded. One problem that held Smith back was his unwillingness to come forward and attack Canelo. Smith let Canelo push him back virtually the entire fight, and he was unable to hold his ground.
Callum Smith injured
Smith suffered a bicep injury with his left arm, and it was badly swollen. His left bicep looked double the size of his right as he left the ring in defeat.
Canelo (54-1-2, 36 KOs) won the WBA Super World super middleweight title from Smith (27-1, 19 KOs), and he also grabbed the vacant WBC title.
The scores showed how ridiculously one-sided the match was with the judges turning in this set: 117-111, 119-109, 119-109.
Alvarez looked sharp despite him coming off of a 13-month layoff since his last fight against Sergey Kovalev in November 2019.
Canelo came down from light heavyweight after vacating the WBO title that he won against the 37-year-old Kovalev, and he showed no signs of being weakened from the weight loss.
Smith had problems trying to land his punches, as Canelo used excellent head and upper body movement to avoid his punches. The lack of hand speed and the way that Smith was pushing his punches didn’t help him.
Canelo saw Smith’s telegraphed shots and was able to avoid most of them. It was only late in the fight where Canelo got a little sloppy where he was hit a few times by good shots from Smith.
Alvarez with big advantage in punch stats
Canelo landed 209 of 484 shots for a connect percentage of 43, according to CompuBox. The reason why Canelo landed so many punches is that Smith stationery against the ropes much of the time, and that made him a sitting duck for the Mexican superstar.
Smith landed 97 of 536 punches for an 18% connect rate, which shows difficult it was for him to land anything.
In the power punch department, Canelo connected on 124 of 220 shots for a 57% connect rate. Callum landed 55 of 228 for a 24% connect rate.
Canelo landed 88 of 274 jabs for a connect percentage of 32. Smith connected on 44 of 311 for 14%.
It’s surprising that the 6’4″ Smith landed so few jabs given his huge height and reach advantage over the 5’8″ Canelo.
