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What Saul “Canelo” Alvarez lacked in quantity, he more than compensated for in quality, testament – the WBC Middleweight title. Canelo beat Miguel Cotto 117-111, 119-109 and 118-110 to win the vacant title by unanimous decision, reports FoxSports.
The title was Cotto’s until a few days ago, when he was stripped of it because he defied the order to pay sanctioning fees for the fight. The middleweight bout, all of which are normally fought at 160 lbs. or 72 kgs, was held at a catchweight of 155 lbs or 70 kgs.
Canelo (meaning ‘Cinnamon’, a nickname he received owing to his red hair) landed 155 to Cotto’s 129 punches, but Cotto threw 629 punches to the former’s 484. Canelo improved his record to 46-1-1, with the lone loss coming against Floyd Mayweather. Cotto dropped to 40-5. With this win, Canelo became only the second Mexican fighter in history to win a world middleweight title.
Canelo was effusive in victory, saying,”It’s an emotion I just can’t put into words. I’m very happy. Much respect to Miguel Cotto. He’s a great champion. But now it’s my era.”
Cotto’s output was high, but Canelo was able to evade them quite easily, and punished the former’s aggression with powerful right hands and uppercuts. The Puerto Rican, Cotto, increased the pace in the eighth round, peppering Canelo with hard jabs, but the Mexican responded with powerful left hands to the body and combinations to thwart any serious offense.
“It doesn’t matter if I landed 10 punches, but 10 well-connected punches, and obviously not get hit by his punches,” said Alvarez.
With this win, Canelo has made a strong case for a title unification bout with Gennady Golovkin, owner of the WBA, WBO, IBO and IBF middleweight belts. Golovkin, who is undefeated(34-0) and has the highest knockout percentage in middleweight history, defeated David Lemieux to capture the IBF title. Golovkin was watching the fight at ringside.
When asked about the possibility of a fight with Golovkin, Canelo said,”With all due respect, if he wants to fight right now I'll put the gloves on and fight him.”
Canelo was a 3-1 favorite preceding the fight, ostensibly so as he’s ten years younger than Cotto and packs more power behind his punches than him. A visibly disappointed Cotto left the ring after the judges’ decision was announced but his trainer, Freddie Roach, had the following to say,” We thought it was much closer than the scorecards showed. It was a competitive fight.”
In a touchingly respectful gesture, Canelo went to Cotto’ s locker room after the fight and told Cotto, “ I admire you .”
