LAS VEGAS – Canelo Alvarez had none of the speed. None of the footwork. But he had one punch. It was enough and now he has it all.
Canelo’s power was summed up Saturday night in one mighty strike that sent Amir Khan bouncing off the canvas like a flat board off a concrete floor midway through a bout that re-asserted the Mexican’s ability to dictate what’s next. Who’s next.
As a statement, it was as definitive as it was dramatic. It showed just how quickly Canelo (47-1-1, 33 KOs) can turn things, everything and anything, in his favor. For weeks, there was a debate about a 155-pound catch weight for a bout that was his first defense of the WBC’s 160-pound title.
Five pounds here, five pounds there. The power is heavy on any scale. It landed, lightning bolt-like, just when it looked as if a major upset was brewing. Khan’s hand speed and agile feet were giving Canelo fits throughout the first five rounds. In the second round, a knot appeared on Canelo’s right cheek bone. But it was there long enough to become a critical target for Khan’s long and accurate jab.
“I was getting in the ring with a big guy,’’ said Khan, who was taken to a nearby emergency room for observation after the bout. “Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to the end.’’
In one momentary lapse, Khan (31-4, 19 KOs) ducked and Canelo threw a right hand counter that landed like a bomb on a chin that has long been a target. At 2:37 of the sixth round, it was over in knockout in an HBO pay-per-view bout, the first at the new T-Mobile Arena.
The crowd went wild. For a few scary moments, Khan never heard the roar. He was out. The back of his head had bounced off the canvas at least once. A crowd of Nevada officials and corner men surrounded him like paramedics. They waved a white towel in what looked to be desperate attempt at getting him to regain consciousness. It looked like an accident scene.
All the while, Canelo paraded from one side of the ring to the other, celebrating his victory. He waved at Gennady Golovkin, who was in a ringside seat.
“i invited him into the ring,’’ Canelo said. “Like we say in Mexico: ‘We don’t f— around.’
“I don’t fear anyone. We don’t come to play in this sport. I fear no one in this sport.’’
When asked if he would fight GGG this year in a title defense mandated by the WBC, Canelo said he was ready.
“Right now,’’ he said. “Right now, I’ll put on the gloves.’’
That didn’t happen, of course. And there’s still doubt about whether it will happen later this year. Canelo has all the leverage, which means he could continue to demand a 155-pound catch-weight, even at the risk of having the WBC title stripped from his thick waist.
“Gennady, Gennady where are you?’’ Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya said from the ring after the bout. “We want to talk to you, talk to and your representatives tomorrow.’’
According to the WBC, Canelo has 15 days to negotiate a deal with GGG.
“I am old school,’’ Golovkin said before opening bell. “Middleweight is 160. I respect the sport of boxing.”
But Canelo holds the upper hand at the negotiating table, especially if the pay-per-view audience is anywhere near the one million mark.
For now, all of boxing’s respect and its perks are on Canelo’s side of the table. That’s power, too.
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David Lemieux says it’s a beginning.
Call it a second beginning.
Lemieux quickly put his career back on track Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena after it looked as if it had come to an end in losing an eighth round stoppage to Gennady Golovkin in October. After the feared GGG, of course, everything looks easy. Glen Tapia was.
Lemieux (35-3, 32 KOs) rocked Tapia from pillar to post and to just about any other place he chose through the first three rounds. In the fourth, Lemieux threw a huge left hook that dropped Tapia onto the canvas and nearly under the ring’s bottom rope. It was as good as over, and Tapia’s corner knew it. It stopped the fight at 56 seconds of the round. Tapia (23-3, 15 KOs) protested, saying he would have fought differently and pursued a knockout had he known his Freddie Roach-led corner was poised to end it.
But the corner simply did what Lemieux might have done later in the fourth and surely in the fifth.
“I was looking for openings and I began to find them,” Lemieux said. “It’s a beginning.”
A good one.
Frankie Gomez finally passed a test that will allow him to graduate from prospect to contender.
Long considered as talented as he was immature, there were always doubts about how Gomez would do against a longtime pro with fundamental know how. Mauricio Herrera is that gatekeeper.
Gomez (21-0, 13 KOs, of Los Angeles, dominated him in every way Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena, adjusting to changes in style and tempo for a unanimous decision — a 100-90 shutout on all three cards — over the respected Herrera (22-6, 7 KOs) in a 10-round welterweight bout..
Curtis Stevens changed his nickname.
The former Showtime now calls himself The Cerebral Assassin.
New identity? Maybe. Maybe, not.
Lets just say that the Cerebral in the re-dubbed part of Stevens (28-5, 21 KOs), a Brooklyn middleweight, didn’t have to think too long or hard to unleash a counter-right Saturday night that lifted Patrick Teixeira into mid-air like a leaf caught helplessly in the wind.
By the time Teixeira (26-1, 22 KOs) landed on the canvas at T-Mobile Arena, he was done. The Brazilian climbed to his feet. Referee Tony Weeks looked into his face and and saw a pair of vacant eyes looking back at him. Weeks ended it at 1:04 of the second round.
Diego De La Hoya has more than a legend’s last name. He has some speed and sting in his hands too.
He used both Saturday in way that would have made Uncle Oscar, also his promoter, proud in a seventh-round stoppage of Rocco Santomauro, a California fighter who had former Oscar De La Hoya rival Shane Mosley in his corner.
Diego De La Hoya (15-0, 9 KOs) knocked down Santomauro (13-1, 1 KO) in the second round and bloodied him above the right eye in the fifth in the last bout before the first pay-per-view televised bout on the Amir Khan-Canelo Alvarez card at T-Mobile Arena.
Jason Quigley waved an Irish flag. Danced to Irish music.
Quigley’s victory over James De La Rosa of Harlingen, Tex., came with an Irish accent and punches accented by power.
De La Rosa (23-4, 13 KOs) tried to elude them and often mocked the blows Saturday night in a 10-round middleweight bout before the Canelo Alvarez-Amir Khan bout at T-Mobile Arena. In the end, however, he didn’t have enough to counter them in losing a unanimous decision to Quigley (11-0, 9 KOs), a lanky middleweight from Donegal
In an eight-round lightweight bout, Lamont Roach Jr. (11-0, 3 KOs) of Washington, D.C., made it look easy, controlling tempo and landing punches almost at will in scoring a unanimous decision over Jose Arturo Esquivel (9-5, 2 KOs) of Mexico.
Rashidi Ellis walked out of T-Mobile Arena the way he walked in.
Unbeaten.
Ellis (15-0, 11 KOs), also as unmarked as T-Mobile’s brand new seats, overwhelmed Marco Antonio Lopez (24-9, 15 KOs) with a volume of punches and power, scoring an eight-round decision that was unanimously one-sided in an junior-middleweight bout, the second Saturday on a card featured by Amir Khan-versus-Canelo Alvarez.
It was a double debut.
For the building and the fighter.
David Mijares, a super-lightweight from Santa Monica, answered the first opening bell at the new T-Mobile Arena Saturday on the Amir Khan-Canelo Alvarez card.
Mijares (1-0) won his debut, scoring a four-round unanimous decision over Omar Reyes (1-3) of Corpus Christi, Tex., about four hours before the HBO’s pay-per-view telecast was scheduled to begin.
