Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, Floyd ?Money? Mayweather (45-0, 26 KOs) decisioned formerly undefeated Saul ?Canelo? Alvarez (42-1, 30 KOs) by scores of 117-111, 116-112, and an incomprehensible 114-114.
Canelo had been calling out Mayweather for the longest time, and he was ignored for the longest time. But after Floyd?s unsatisfactory one-sided romp over Robert Guerrero last May, The Money Team, with a little push from Showtime, agreed that Canelo was the most credible challenger out there. He was undefeated. He was young. He was strong. He had red hair and freckles.
But numbers and complexion do not a fighter make. In his last fight, Canelo defeated Austin Trout fair and square when they met in April, but No Doubt Trout, no one?s idea of a world-beater, extended him the distance in a fight that was competitive if not especially close. But Trout was inadequate preparation for a fight against Mayweather, as the evening so resoundingly proved.
Some believed that Canelo was going to make history Saturday night. He said as much himself several times. But making history and becoming history are two different things, and Canelo?s game plan, if it could be called a game plan, was as unimaginative at its inception as it was in its execution.
Despite outweighing Mayweather by 15 pounds, having gained 13 pounds since the weigh-in the day before the fight, Canelo tried to outbox the boxer, he tried to counterpunch with a counterpuncher. That might have looked good on paper, except that Mayweather is no ordinary boxer, any more than he is an ordinary counterpuncher.
