Another boxing drama unfolded on May 7th at T-Mobile Arena down at the Strip in Los Vegas with two world famous middle weight boxers taking it all out at each other.
The first boxer is Mexican Canelo Alvarez, born 1990, the holder of several Middle Weight championship titles
The second boxer is, British, Amir Khan, an older boxer, born 1986, who won an Olympic silver middle at 17 and a year later won the light-welterweight championship.
Khan was fighting Canelo for three of world middleweight championship titles on that Saturday night at a fully packed arena with highly anticipating spectators, numbering more than thirteen thousands, including many Canelo’s little nieces and nephews. So as you would imagine, for Canelo it was quite personal.
Amir Khan had to change his favored division and move up two tiers in weight to fight Canelo. Canelo was the bigger and stronger guy in the fight, while Amir Khan was coming in hoping that his fast punches, fast legs and front running skills would at least get him to the end of the 12 rounds intact and maybe even victorious.
The fight quickly started and it was quite promising for any fans who were rooting for the underdog Amir Khan. Khan wanted to impress on Canelo from the beginning his speed with his punches, managing to land a few fast and reasonably power punches in the first two rounds. The unofficial score card of one of the judges confirmed his lead in these two rounds.
Yet even in these two early rounds, in which Khan would be expected to perform better given still intact speed and body, Khan had to evade some really powerful swings by Canelo. Especially during the second round, Canelo tried harder to get back from Khan some of the glow that he had put out in his performance in the first round, with two head blows to Canelo that elicited tears from one of his little nieces attending the saga. In these early two rounds, Khan was moving around the ring fast while Canelo was cutting corners and maintaining a close to the center position in the ring, which to me indicated more anticipation and worry on the part of Khan than more energy on his part. And Canelo did finally manage to get a powerful jab, a left one in this case, to Khan’s face.
Then the third round started and things finally started to clearly turn in the direction that most boxing experts had predicted. Canelo’s power advantage started to show up clearly. With instructions from his coach to start to closer and faster and get some punches at Khan especially to his body if not to his face, Canelo took advantage of Khan’s dropping maneuvering speed and his eagerness to get in to get some punches on him to counter with some really powerful punches to the Khan’s body. Khan left side of his chest and bell started racking up punches and increasingly visible damage. The third round was Canelo’s and so were some other following rounds.
The fourth and fifth were pretty hard on Khan, who had to sustain very heavy blows to the body, especially to his left side, from Canelo. The power of the younger Canelo with more than a few extra pounds weight advange started to take a heavy toll on Khan. The first sign of wobbling in Khan’s legs came in the fifth round after a heavy jab from Canelo that landed square on Amir’s right cheek. Up until the fifth round Khan had landed only three body punches on Canelo while the latter had managed to land 16 such punches on Khan. The gap was just destined to widen even further. Over the next two rounds it, the fifth and sixth, power started to take a clear lead over speed.
The sixth round was the decisive one. At 147 pounds, Khan was being pummeled by the more powerful Canelo whose favorite was at his favorite weight of 155 pounds. Canelo was about to deliver the blow that had been anticipated by many, the knock-out of mercy. And that he did and he did it in style and a lot of cunning. Just when Khan was push his hands down to avoid what seemed to be going to be a 26th punishing blow to the left side of his chest, Canelo went for the unprotected chin instead. The full force of his right hand, landing sideways on Khan’s left cheek and chin, disconnected the neural link from Khan’s brain to his legs, landing Khan cold on the floor of the ring with a heavy smack of the back of his head to the floor. Having realized that he had won the game, Canelo felt obliged to go down on his knees near Khan to make sure he hadn’t caused permanent damage to his poor over-hopeful opponent. He had not but was sure a humiliating finish after what seemed to be a promising effort from Khan early one.
Overall it was a great fight to watch with a lot of lessons to learn.
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