By Tom Donelson / Member Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA)
Canelo Alveraz wanted to reclaim his unanimous undisputed super middleweight championship as he fought the present IBF supermiddleweight William Schull. Alvarez was the super middleweight champion, but he was stripped of his IBF championship when he chose to fight Berlanga versus the IBF mandatory challenger.
This fight follows the pattern of the Time square boredom as we saw the lowest total of punches by both fighters in CompuBox history and Canelo Alvarez even finished in the top three in individual lowest total. He averaged 5 landed for 13 punches and Schull averaged 5 punches and threw 24 per round.
Alvarez was not impressive in this bout, but he did win as he landed nearly 40 percent of his punches whereas Schull only landed nearly 20 percent. Schull tried to box his way to victory and landed a punch here or here but for the most part, Schull was ineffectua.
After four rounds, you could have called the fight even as Schull avoided getting hit and Alvarez was throwing very little and landing little.
In the fifth and sixth round, Alvarez connected on a few body shots whereas Schull moved around, throwing jabs and occasionally he landed combinations as the fight approach the half way mark, it was a tough fight to score as both fighters landed the same number of punches but very few thrown.
Alvarez was landing power shots and body shots throughout the second half of the fight, but movement of Schull allowed him to escape Alvarez power and Alvarez did not really slow down Schull movement.
In the eleventh round, Alvarez duck under Schull punch and tied him up. The last two rounds, Schull continued his movement, but he rarely throws a punch with bad intentions but then as the fight crawled toward the end and in the final round, Schull seem happy to be standing at the end of the fight but then Alvarez didn’t effectively cut off the ring.
The judges scored 115-113, 116-112 and 119-109 for Alvarez and I had 117-111 for Canelo but I was not impressed. I don’t know if Schull movement bothered Alvarez or Alvarez is showing the impact of fighting of 65 fights and being 35 going on 45.
Alvarez has been loading his bank account after his Dmitry Bivol loss and quite frankly he has been fighting underwhelming fighters and avoiding those who could give him a tussle such as no rematch with Bivol or challenging David Benavidez. And while Terrance Crawford is a big money fight, he is an undersized junior middleweight champion who will make the cash register ring but not necessarily provide the kind of opposition to the bigger Canelo Alvarez. Of course, Alvarez lost to undersize fighter in Floyd Mayweather but then Alvarez was not yet a full fledge Middleweight himself.
Alvarez is a Hall of Fame fighter but at this stage of his career, he has decided that it is better to make a ton of money while he can but in the process, boxing fans lose out.