In the world of boxing, speed kills and last Sunday, Saul Alvarez showed why he is at the apogee of the sport.
Because he was way faster than Avni Yildirim, he pretty much had his way with his opponent and even set the tone of the fight with the very first punch he landed.
THE FIGHT. The mandatory challenger looked uncharacteristically timid in the first round and spent most of the round covering up.
Ordinarily, the rugged Yildirim is an aggressive fighter, but he was very cautious and unwilling to engage. Canelo peppered him with jabs and vicious digs to the body all throughout the round.
Canelo started landing huge uppercuts in the second round, yet Yildirim seemed strangely reticent and allowed himself to be a stationary target, often responding with a solitary blow here and there that did little, to no damage.
In the third, the “Turkish Wolf” did try to open up, but this only resulted in disastrous consequences.
Canelo unloaded a lightning quick jab-right straight combo that knocked him down. He immediately got up and tried to laugh it off, but as action resumed, Canelo started unloading vicious combinations.
He was unable to finish him off, but Canelo continued digging to his body and as the bell rang, Yildirim clearly looked defeated.
Quite unexpectedly, his corner threw in the towel as Yildirim showed no eagerness to get beat up some more when trainer Joel Diaz asked if he wanted to continue.
ALVAREZ. Most mandatories aren’t exactly super-fights and so I wasn’t expecting Yildirim (21-3, 12 KOs) to pull off any surprises.
Alvarez (55-1, 37 KOs) looked every bit the 50-1 favorite coming in and showed everyone there are levels to this. Alvarez outlanded the inept Yildirim by a margin of 67 to 11, according to CompuBox statistics and of those 67, 58 were power shots.
With the victory he is one step closer to his ambitious goal of unifying all the belts in the super-heavy weight division.
Up next is a unification bout in May with Billy Joe Saunders who holds the WBO diadem.
VERBATIM. “It doesn’t matter if they are taller and have more reach or whether they have a good new trainer or no trainer, it doesn’t matter,”—Saul Alvarez (www.cbssports.com)
LAST ROUND. It’s on Veronica B. Corrales, who turns a milestone as she turns a young and lovely 60 this week. Cheers!