Canelo Alvarez Soundly Defeats Rocky Fielding for a Secondary Super Middleweight World Title

Canelo Alvarez may have moved up one weight class… But he hasn’t lost his winning ways.

The 27-year-old Mexican professional boxer, the unified middleweight world champion and boxing’s biggest star, moved up one weight class and destroyed Rocky Fielding with a heavy body attack to take his secondary super middleweight world title by third-round knockout in his first non-pay-per-view fight since 2015.

Canelo Alvarez

Alvarez knocked Fielding down four times, much to the delight of the raucous pro-Canelo crowd of 20,112.

The fight was Alvarez’s first in New York, a place he had always wanted to fight, and it represented the first bout of the record-breaking contract he signed in October with new sports streaming service DAZN. Looking for a franchise athlete, DAZN lavished Alvarez with a five-year, 11-fight, $365 million deal to take him off pay-per-view in hopes that he would help drive subscriptions to the $9.99-per-month service.

Alvarez had been under exclusive contract to HBO and was the biggest pay-per-view star of the post-Floyd Mayweather era, but that contract expired in September, and HBO made no move to retain his services because it decided to dump boxing coverage, which it concluded last week after 45 years of covering the sport at the highest level.

Alvarez (51-1-2, 35 KOs) moved seamlessly to his new outlet and shined in his debut against an overmatched opponent in Fielding, whom virtually nobody gave a chance to win or even compete.

The fight was as big of a mismatch as most expected, and Alvarez tortured Fielding to the body.

“That was the plan in the gym, to hit the body and then move up [to the head], and that’s the result. You see the result here,” Alvarez said through an interpreter.

Alvarez was coming off the biggest win of his career in September, when he narrowly outpointed Gennady Golovkin to win the unified middleweight world championship in the biggest fight of the year, a rematch of last year’s controversial draw. Alvarez wanted to fight once more this year after a failed drug test cost him the GGG rematch in May because of a suspension.

He took the opportunity to cherry-pick a titleholder at 168 pounds in Fielding and won a belt in his third weight division, despite the title being a second-tier version.

Canelo Alvarez to Challenge Rocky Fielding in an Attempt to Win a Second World Title

Canelo Alvarez is aiming to win another belt…

The 28-year-old Mexican boxer, still celebrating his majority decision victory over Gennady Golovkin to win the unified middleweight world title in their September 15 rematch, will be back in the ring before the end of the year and in a new weight division trying to win another belt.

Canelo Alvarez

Alvarez will move up to the super middleweight division and challenge Rocky Fielding for his secondary world title on December 15 in his first fight at famed Madison Square Garden in New York.

“I’m very excited to announce my next fight. Next December 15th at the New York MSG,” Alvarez wrote on social media. “Taking a big challenge. I will fight for the world title at 168 pounds versus Rocky Fielding, the current WBA champion!”

Alvarez and his team were planning for a possible December 15 fight even before the fight with Golovkin as long as Alvarez came out of the fight healthy.

Although Alvarez (50-1-2, 34 Kos) suffered a nasty cut over his left eye against Golovkin, Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez told ESPN that Alvarez had been told by his doctor that he would be fine to fight in December and would soon be permitted to return to training.

So while Alvarez plans to fight again this year, it is unclear whether he will do the fight with his longtime broadcast partner HBO, which has had him under contract since 2015. A Golden Boy spokesman told ESPN that no decision on a broadcaster has been made yet. HBO announced last week it was giving up its boxing franchise after 45 years of covering the sport.

Canelo Alvarez Edges Gennady Golovkin by Majority Decision to Capture the WBC and WBA Middleweight Titles

Saul Canelo” Alvarez is el campeon

The 29-year-old Mexican superstar boxer scored the signature win of his career in this weekend’s long-awaited rematch with Gennady Golovkin, capturing the WBC and WBA middleweight titles by a majority decision in a classic encounter that all but guarantees a third installment in May.

Canelo Alvarez

Two of the finest pure fighters of their generation treated the sellout crowd of 21,965 at the T-Mobile Arena to a contest of extreme physical and psychological intensity that managed even to surpass their electric first meeting last year, which ended in a widely derided split draw.

This one was just as close and not entirely beyond dispute, merely flecked by controversy rather than defined by it.

Ringside judges Dave Moretti and Steve Weisfeld scored it 115-113 to Álvarez, while Glenn Feldman had it 114-114.

Álvarez (50-1-2, 34 KOs), the popular red-haired boxer from Guadalajara, now adds Golovkin’s belts at 160lbs to the lineal middleweight title he earned by virtue of a 2015 win over Miguel Cotto.

“I showed my victory with facts,” Álvarez said afterward through an interpreter. “He was the one who was backing up. I feel satisfied because I gave a great fight. It was a clear victory.”

For Golovkin (38-1-1, 34 KOs), the razor-thin verdict marked his first defeat in 40 professional fights, the first at any level since the 2005 amateur world championships, and ended his division-record streak of 20 consecutive middleweight title defenses on level terms with Bernard Hopkins, who incidentally is a minor stakeholder in Golden Boy Promotions, which promotes Álvarez.

Benavidez to Fight Rogelio Medina in Quest for WBC Super Middleweight World Title

David Benavidez is on the hunt for history…

The 20-year-old Latino boxer is one step closer to achieving his goal of becoming the youngest fighter to win a super middleweight world title.

David Benavidez

The WBC has agreed to sanction a title eliminator between Benavidez (17-0, 16 KOs) and former title challenger Rogelio “Porky” Medina (37-7, 31 KOs), according to promoter Sampson Lewkowicz.

“This is the final test for David Benavidez,” Lewkowicz said. “If he does to this guy what he did to so many other fighters, it will be time for the world to acknowledge that David is going to be a star in boxing. This test will show everyone that he is truly everything we’ve been saying he is since he was a teenager. I am proud of the hard work he is doing and look forward to this great victory.”

The date and location of the fight are still to be determined, Lewkowicz said.

England’s Callum Smith (22-0, 17 KOs) and Anthony Dirrell (30-1-1, 24 KOs), the former titleholder, are due to meet this spring for the belt recently vacated by Badou Jack, who is moving up in weight. The winner of that bout must make his first defense against Turkey’s Avni Yildirim (15-0, 10 KOs).

The fighter who emerges with the title following those two bouts will be mandated to face the Benavidez-Medina winner.

“This is the biggest opportunity of my life, and I’m not going to let it go to waste,” said Benavidez, who served as one of unified middleweight world champion Gennady Golovkin‘s chief sparring partners as he prepared for his March 18 fight with Daniel Jacobs. “I’m going to destroy this guy like I do everybody else. I have never trained this hard for a fight, and I feel that, come fight time, I’ll be extremely strong and do it up.”

The super middleweight division was created in 1984 and the youngest fighter to win a world title at 168 pounds is Darin Van Horn, who was 22 years, 8 months and 11 days old when he knocked out Lindell Holmes in the 11th round to win the IBF version of the belt May 18, 1991.

If Benavidez defeats Medina, he would get the opportunity to challenge for a world title well before he turns 22. Benavidez does not turn 21 until Dec. 17.

Alvarez Defeats Liam Smith to Claim WBO Light-Middleweight Title

Canelo Alvarez has a new title under his belt…

The 26-year-old Mexican professional boxer knocked out Liam Smith in the ninth round Saturday night after dropping him in the previous two rounds, winning the WBO light middleweight championship before a record crowd of 51,240 at AT&T Stadium.

Canelo Alvarez

The victory kept Alvarez (48-1-1) on pace for a showdown with undefeated, unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin that is expected be held by September 2017, according to Alvarez promoter Oscar De La Hoya.

“I fear no man,” Alvarez said in the AT&T ring through an interpreter. “I am the best fighter in this. About a month ago, we offered GGG three or four times as much to make the fight.”

Golovkin is a 34-year-old Kazakhstan native based in Santa Monica, California, who has said he wants the fight as soon as possible. Signals have been mixed from the Alvarez camp whether he was waiting to better negotiating terms and location as well as wanting to spend more time training at a higher weight.

Alvarez, ranked as the world’s best boxer, pound for pound, by BoxRec, had won a middleweight title but vacated it for this shot at the junior middleweight championship, sparking criticism that he was avoiding the hard-punching Golovkin.

“We are ready for him and he doesn’t want to accept,” Alvarez said. “As I said, we are a team and I fear no one. I fight the best and I want to fight the best. I am the best at this sport and Viva La Mexico!”

Negotiations toward a fight this fall fell apart, and some were surprised Alvarez said Golovkin had been offered a fight.

The large crowd for the Mexican Independence weekend bout will keep the home of the Dallas Cowboys in the running for the prospective match with Golovkin. The attendance record had been set in a Manny Pacquiao fight.

Alvarez was loudly cheered throughout the fight as well as every time he was shown on the screen during undercard bouts. Before the knockout in the ninth, his blistering pace of right uppercuts continued to take a toll and he opened a cut above Smith’s right eye.

Smith (23-1-1) wasn’t the pushover some expected when Alvarez announced the fight instead of meeting Golovkin. An inch taller and a little stronger, Smith had never been knocked down. He was willing take some hits while trying to land his knockout right. Alvarez was much quicker and had a strong and swift left while trying to set up a barrage of left and right body blows.

“If I would have waited a little longer and gotten more experience I would have been able to fight a guy like that better,” Smith said. “I am very disappointed. Canelo was too good. I needed better timing, my timing was off.”