SAN ANTONIO – Mexican Saul “Canelo” Alvarez is a better fighter than he appears on television, which is an ironical development given how desperately two television broadcasters, one in the U.S., one in Mexico, now crave his success. He is also better with fans and interviewers, more comfortable, more himself, if no better looking, than many stoic Mexican champions are. These are fine, important things, since Saturday at Alamodome ensured he is our sport’s future, being, as he is, the best young representative from boxing’s most reliable fanbase.
One didn’t need to be a Canelo partisan to see him win a close, clear victory over New Mexico’s Austin Trout in their junior middleweight title-unification match, Saturday, a victory judges unanimously saw Alvarez’s way: 115-112, 116-111 and 118-109. My scorecard concurred, 115-114, marking rounds 5, 6, 8, 10 and 12 for Trout, rounds 1 and 4 even, and rounds 2, 3, 7, 9 and 11 for Alvarez – with round 7 going 10-8 in his favor. Additionally, I marked with an asterisk rounds 2, 3, 5, 11 and 12, as those close enough to engender goodfaith debate.
All calculus aside, my sense of the fight at ringside was that Alvarez was its winner, the man who most successfully manifested what the verb “to fight” both connotes and denotes. What is not adequately transmitted about Alvarez by television – why, once more, attending fights bests watching them through self-interested and -deluding filters – is the ferocity of his attack. He has none of the workaday commitment his countrymen typically apply to their punches, blows that hurt for being efficiently leveraged by professional fighters whose bodyweights are properly balanced over feet that are flat.
Alvarez punches to hurt his opponent in a personal way; he wants every blow to tell with a wince or whimper or welt from or on its recipient – and Alvarez flies his body at another’s in a flash of violence quickly as he returns it to a more observant mien. He sells-out with his right hand; from the opening of Saturday’s fight, long before he had Trout’s measure or any expectation he’d not be countered and then imperiled by Trout’s counter, Alvarez threw righthands recklessly, whether as straight crosses or looping hybrid hooks, while Trout threw a fleeing jab, one meant as a tasting, sampling thing, something from which he could hurriedly extract himself when it did not land – and it did not land, not fractionally often as anyone, especially Trout, thought it would.
If Alvarez’s ferocity was the evening’s best surprise, his elusiveness was runner-up. It was striking how few of Trout’s strikes got closer than near him. In the kaleidoscope of lights and colors and angles and commentary that is a televised prizefight, much of what appears a clean punch verily is not. From my ringside notes, about a round scored for Trout: “Round 5: Trout is being outclassed by Canelo. In that round Canelo didn’t land enough to win, but Trout didn’t land hardly anything either. Trout cannot seem to find Canelo.”
Thursday night Austin Trout visited San Fernando Gymnasium, downtown, for a light workout. He was very good at what he did but not great. He did mitts work at a pedestrian rate, not hitting particularly hard, not committing particularly full, not catching the center of the mitt with more than two-thirds his punches. Were he a baseball pitcher, Trout would barely miss corners, get behind in counts, and then serve a juicy fastball over the plate.
He was gracious, of course, gracious as the reputation that preceded him: After 40 minutes of shadowboxing, mitts and skipping rope, his handlers had the San Fernando faithful – mostly local boxers and their families (the workout was not public or announced) – line up at the base of the steps, make their ways to the ring, and have their pictures taken with the champ. Trout had a smile or hug or softly said pleasantry for each, even if not one bore a resemblance to him, even if every one planned to cheer Alvarez’s passionate pursuit of his unconsciousness in 48 hours.
Trout is not special as Alvarez, and that would be so even if Trout had somehow finagled a decision Saturday. When I glanced at the tally of my scorecard, I was glad to see Alvarez was the victor, because that is how the fight felt from ringside. Alvarez made the consequential choices in the fight, whether the choices that preceded his hurled righthands, or the choice to retreat to the ropes and audition for a Mayweather fight unlikely to materialize.
Or perhaps it was not an audition at all but evidence of his fatigue; it is a sapping strategy Alvarez applied Saturday, harder than pressure fighting, for its backward steps, harder than defensive boxing, for the contractions that happen an instant before throwing righthands and the exertion of stopping them when they miss. Alvarez relaxes much as possible for his style of combat, one wishing to inflict pain with every blow, he throws three punches – jab, cross and right uppercut – more efficiently than his peers, but still he gets visibly fatigued at regular intervals of a 36-minute fight, giving an opponent at least six of them through inactivity.
I have now borne eyewitness to Canelo Mania, yes, but I still do not understand it; Alvarez feels more like a 20,000-seat prizefighter than the nearly 40,000 he filled at Alamodome. He is a more suspenseful fighter in person than he appears on television, though, and more than a novel complexion, much more, which assuages a fear serious people had about him. If he is our sport’s future, he is not a bad future to have.
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
