Terence Crawford defeated Canelo Alvarez via unanimous decision to become the undisputed super middleweight champion on Saturday.
The judges scored the bout 116-112, 115-113 (x2), to make Crawford the first male boxer in the four-belt era to become undisputed champion in three different weight classes. With the win, the 37 year old moves to 42-0 with 31 KOs for his career.
“I told y’all I’m not here just by a coincidence. God blessed me,” Crawford said. “He made this event, and he made this night just for me. And I’ve been telling y’all that. It’s not my fault. It’s God’s.”
“I’d just like to say, thank you,” Crawford continued. “Thank you to all the supporters. To all the haters. I’m happy he gets to make it home to his children, and I get to make it home to my children.”
The bout brought in an Allegiant Stadium attendance record, with 70, 842 fans in attendance, and was the 3rd highest gate in boxing history at $47.2M. This was in addition to the millions of fight fans watching from around the world on Netflix as well.
Though Canelo was slightly more accurate in the fight (landing 38 percent of his punches compared to 37 percent for Crawford), the American was the much busier fighter on the night. “Bud” landed 115 of 534 total punches (70 of 208 power punches) compared to Canelo’s 99 out of 338 (83 of 260 power punches).
Crawford’s defence and elusiveness was on display throughout the night, limiting Canelo to just a 32 percent connection rate on his power punches, which was well below the 46 percent average across the Mexican fighter’s last 12 contests.
Even though the scorecards had the margin of victory as a relatively close one, watching Crawford in the ring, the bout felt more one sided than the scores would indicate. With the Omaha, Nebraska native coming up in weight, many believed that Canelo’s size would be too much for the new three weight king.
However, with Alvarez’s attempts to back Crawford down and trap him in a corner proving unfruitful, it seemed as though the favourite’s game plan was fairly limited on the night. Crawford’s elusiveness kept him out of danger, while his speed was visibly a step above Alvarez on the night.
When asked whether it would be his last fight, Crawford was non-committal, saying “I don’t know… I have to sit down with my team, and we’re gonna talk about it.”
With an unblemished record, victories over some of the largest stars in the sport, and now the undisputed 3 weight king, if it was indeed the last time Crawford steps into a ring, his place amongst some of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport is now all but secured.
Photo: Million dollaz worth of game. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.