Canelo Alvarez (57-2-2, 39 KOs) got badly exposed by the talented unbeaten WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol (20-0, 10 KOs) in losing a one-sided 12-round unanimous decision on Saturday night in their headliner on DAZN PPV at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The 31-year-old superstar Canelo was completely overmatched tonight, eating jabs and combinations from quicker, more energetic Bivol the entire fight.
Canelo looked like he deserved to win two rounds, the first and the ninth. Other than those two rounds, Bivol dominated from 2 to 8 and 10 to 12.
The scores:
After the fight, Canelo made it clear that he wanted a rematch, as he was not happy with losing. There’s a rematch clause in the contract, and Bivol says he’s game.
“It doesn’t stay like this,” said Canelo Alvarez when asked if he wants a rematch with Dmitry Bivol.
“No problem,” said Bivol about Canelo wanting a rematch.
It would be a good idea for Canelo to think hard before he chooses to exercise his rematch clause because the way the fight played out tonight, he’s not going to do any better in a second match with Bivol.
Bivol took advantage of the flaws that Canelo showed last year in terms of the Mexican star’s low work rate. The talented Russian fighter made it a point to throw combinations of 2 to 4 punches in answering back Canelo’s single power shots.
While Canelo did an admirable job of blocking many of Bivol’s punches, he still got hit a lot due to him throwing sustained combinations. Canelo would block the first two, but the last two shots were landing through his guard.
Once Bivol got comfortable in the fifth round, the route was full-on, as he was hitting Canelo at will repeatedly, and there was nothing the Mexican star could do about it.
When Alvarez would fire back a punch, it was a single shot, and it wasn’t enough to compete with the combinations that he was getting hit with by Bivol.
Early on, Canelo stopped trying to throw to the body of Bivol because he was getting countered by him, and he would step back to get out of range.
The fight resembled the April 30th super featherweight matchup between Shakur Stevenson and Oscar Valdez.
Bivol was able to keep the shorter Canelo on the outside, unable to land his big punches. When Canelo did come forward to try and unload one of his big shots, Bivol would jab him in the face & quickly move away before he could get in punching range.
