Canelo Alvarez Out-Huges Miguel Cotto

Usually experience trumps youth, but not on this night.

Saul “Canelo” Alvarez is the new WBC middleweight champion after beating Miguel Cotto by unanimous points decision on Saturday.

Youth prevailed as the 25-year-old Canelo (46-1-1, 32 KOs) dominated the Puerto Rican champion 10 years his senior.

The fight generated a lot of buzz and was promoted as the opposite of the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao bout that seemed to turn off fans.

Obstacles for an immediate fight with Golovkin are Alvarez’s hesitation to agree to fight at a 160-pound limit after Saturday’s 155-pound catchweight fight, and a concern that Golovkin, after drawing only 150,000 pay-per-view buys in October, is still building his brand. But massive-ness was the main mechanism of Alvarez’s wide decision win over the middleweight champion.

“Cotto won’t be Pernell Whitaker or Mayweather in there, but he can box a bit”.

Alvarez swung the momentum back his way in the seventh round. He landed left hooks to body and head. During the course of the weekend in the build-up for this fight, many sources close to and around Golden Boy Promotions stated that a 2016 middleweight showdown between Golovkin and Alvarez won’t happen. After falling behind in the early stages of the fight, Canelo began to unload with singular power shots, investing in right hands, body shots and uppercut leads. The scores were 118-110 by Burt Clements, 117-111 John McKaie, and 119-109 Dave Moretti. Yahoo Sports says, “Cotto actually out-threw Alvarez, 629-484, but that was largely due to an inordinate amount of jabs”. But by the third round, Alvarez was landing a few of the big punches he was winging at Cotto. From the first round on it was clear Cotto respected Canelo’s power; he didn’t apply much pressure and kept his guard high, which prevented him from doing much more than jab for most of the fight.

In the co-feature, exciting Japanese puncher Takashi Miura (29-2-2, 22 KO) defends his WBC Super Featherweight Championship against undefeated Francisco Vargas (22-0-1, 16 KO) in a fight that could steal the show. This was a great victory for me. This fight was for all of Mexico.

The most likely possibility would be a fight with Gennady Golovkin, the unbeaten IBF, IBO and WBC world middleweight champion of the world. If Canelo wants to fight in September, on Mexican Independence Day weekend-and that’s my prediction-Golovkin will be ready and waiting.

Vargas won a piece of the 130-pound title, but paid a price to do it. He was knocked down once and staggered at the end of the eighth round, and the ring doctor looked closely at his swollen right eye before allowing the fight to continue in the ninth.