Canelo Alvarez outclassed Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in their 12-round super middleweight fight on Saturday in Las Vegas, winning by a score of 120-108 on all three judges’ scorecards.
Alvarez landed 43 percent (145-of-340) of his power punches, slightly less than his 46 percent average entering the fight. Eighty-three percent of Alvarez’s landed punches were to the head of Chavez Jr.
Chavez Jr. landed 30 percent of his punches, according to CompuBox, as compared to his 41 percent -- best among CompuBox-tracked boxers -- entering the fight. He landed 71 punches, after averaging 170 landed punches in his previous five fights.
Alvarez improved his record to 49-1-1 (34 knockouts). It was his seventh win in succession since his only professional loss, to Floyd Mayweather in September 2013. Five of Alvarez’s opponents in his winning streak have been current or former world champions.
Chavez Jr., son of International Boxing Hall of Famer Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., is 50-3-1 (32 knockouts), with one no contest. He has lost two of his past four fights and is 1-2 against current or former champions.
Résumés
Although Saturday’s fight was not for a title, both fighters have a championship pedigree. They are the only two Mexican-born fighters to win a middleweight title (160-pound limit).
Alvarez is the WBO junior middleweight (154 pound) champion and a former WBC middleweight, WBC junior middleweight and WBA junior middleweight champion.
Chavez Jr. made three title defenses as the WBC middleweight champion in 2011 and 2012.
Alvarez entered the fight as the No. 1-ranked junior middleweight and the No. 7-ranked pound-for-pound fighter, according to ESPN. Chavez Jr. is not ranked in any division of ESPN’s rankings.
May 5, a boxing weekend
The Cinco de Mayo weekend has been popular for major fights for some time. Mayweather helped increase the popularity of the weekend for boxing with his annual fights, most notably against Manny Pacquiao in 2015.
This was the third year in a row that Alvarez has fought around that weekend. In his previous such fight, he christened the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas in 2016 with a knockout win over Amir Khan.
Saturday’s fight was the fifth time since 2010 that Alvarez has fought on the weekend of May 5, and he has won all five fights. Chavez Jr. had never fought on that weekend.
Viewership
Alvarez cashed in with his pay-per-view fight against Mayweather, which generated a reported 2.2 million buys. Since then, the only time Alvarez has come close to that was when he faced Miguel Cotto in 2015 and drew nearly 1 million buys.
Although Saturday’s bout might not have drawn as many pay-per-view buys as Mayweather-Alvarez, it was estimated to have exceeded the Mayweather-Alvarez fight on Mexican TV in terms of combined homes it reached (16.9 million, compared with 5.9 million).