?I love tall dudes. I always like to chop down big trees.??Marvelous Marvin Hagler
Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Saul ?Canelo? Alvarez (51-1-2, 34 KOs), the WBA/WBC middleweight champion from Jalisco, Guadalajara, Mexico, moved up in weight to destroy reigning and defending WBA super middleweight champion Rocky Fielding (27-2, 15 KOs), stopping the tough Liverpudlian at 2:38 of round three, after dropping him four times.
Fighting out of the red corner in red trunks trimmed in gold and white, Canelo is starting to redefine destruction for his own purposes. Rocky towered over him, but it was David and Goliath all over again.
Fielding, fighting out of the blue corner in blue and white trunks, came to fight, even with the odds stacked against him. He tried to land punches. He tried to protect himself at all times. He tried to fight back. But Canelo was on him like a rash and he wasn?t going away.
The former champion is not an elite fighter, which made it feel less like a contest than a kind of show. But Canelo is out to conquer the world and Rocky was in the way. He retreated to the ropes early in round one under a fusillade of punches, looking less like a champ than a loser halfway into the opening round. Like most fighters, Canelo loves a stationary target, the bigger the better, and in no time a body shot dropped Rocky to his knees. He was up at eight, smiling but hurt, and eager for the fight to resume. The bell rang. A big round for Canelo.
Canelo looked Hall of Fame bound in round two. With a tight defense, hands high, elbows to the body, he fought like a man at the top of his game. He varied his punch output, lefts, rights, hooks, uppercuts, thrown with bad intentions. But it was Canelo?s body shots, dozens of them, a lost art thudding through the arena, that bent Rocky this way and that before he went down a second time. He beat the count and made it through the round.
Round three was no more competitive. Outgunned and outclassed, Rocky was defenseless. He went down a third time. Again he made it to his feet again. But not for long. Another body shot from the body snatcher from Guadalajara dropped him again and the ref waved it off.
?Canelo is an elite fighter,? said Fielding. ?He?s strong. I was catching some shots, but he kept coming forward. The body shots were really tough. He placed his shots well, and he caught me. I stood there too long and tried to mix with him. I gave it everything, and the better man won.?
