Canelo Alvarez is still the undisputed super middleweight champion.
On Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Alvarez dropped Jaime Munguia en route to a unanimous decision victory (117-110, 116-111 & 115-112).
Munguia had his moments landing some clean combinations, but Alvarez walked through all of them and didn’t show any signs of being affected by the punches.
Alvarez landed a picture-perfect right uppercut that sent Munguia to the canvas in the fourth round. It was the first time Munguia had been dropped in his career.
Munguia didn’t slow his effort after this moment. He made it to his feet and kept trying to put pressure on Alvarez throughout the fight.
While he landed a few noteworthy punches each round, Munguia’s lack of speed left him vulnerable to Alvarez’s power counterpunches, leading to the former being outboxed.
According to CompuBox numbers forwarded to me, Alvarez outlanded Munguia 234-170, and most notably, he connected on 151 power punches to 96 for the challenger.
With the victory, Alvarez improved his impressive record to 61-2-2. Munguia took the first loss of his professional career. He is now 43-1. While Munguia lost, he made a solid account of himself. Perhaps he could move up to fight at light heavyweight.
Munguia looked massive in the ring, so fighting at 175 pounds doesn’t appear to be unreasonable. The central question after the fight was whether Alvarez would face David Benavidez.
PBC’s Jim Gray asked Alvarez the question, but the champion was mostly non-committal. He talked about wanting to take some time off.
This response drew boos from the crowd, and Alvarez appeared to try to turn things around by upping the energy of his response and saying it all comes down to money.
TalkSport’s Michael Benson captured the quote:
It seems clear that Alvarez isn’t keen on facing Benavidez. The undefeated 27-year-old has been chasing a fight with the Mexican legend for over a year but hasn’t gotten much reciprocating energy from Alvarez.
Benavidez has already made plans to move up to light heavyweight. He is scheduled to face Oleksandr Gvozdyk on June 15 in Las Vegas on the undercard of Gervonta Davis vs. Frank Martin.
We’ll see who Alvarez gives the next shot to face him. If he keeps to form, that fight will likely take place in September. He has fought in May on Cinco de Mayo and in September near Mexican Independence Day for the past two years.
