LAS VEGAS — Terence “Bud” Crawford reached boxing immortality with a dominant victory by unanimous decision over the sport’s biggest star, Mexico’s Canelo Alvarez, on Saturday.
By winning the undisputed super middleweight world championship, Crawford is the first undisputed three-division champion in boxing’s modern history.
Crawford’s master class came before a sold-out, highly partisan Mexican Independence Day weekend crowd of 70,482 fans, which was the largest crowd ever assembled for an event at Allegiant Stadium. The bout also was streamed live on Netflix.
The judges’ scorecards read 116-112, 115-113, 115-113.
After both fighters spent the first round feeling each other out with minimal activity, Crawford (now 42-0, 31 KOs) established a narrow advantage in the second and third rounds. The fourth brought the first real fireworks of the bout, as Crawford began by landing a flurry of punches and largely paced the round before Alvarez ended with a monstrous right that froze his opponent for a split second.
Despite moving up two divisions from 154 to 168 pounds, Crawford maintained his usual speed and motion, which presented trouble for the flat-footed Alvarez. Crawford’s counterpunching also proved lethal, as it typically has, preventing Alvarez, 35, from getting into a comfortable punching rhythm at any point.
The 37-year-old Crawford established complete control, both in scoring and pace, with a decisive sixth round and a strong start to the seventh. It was around this point that Alvarez’s prospects began to feel rather bleak, given his clear speed disadvantage and habit of fading in the later rounds.
The ninth round began with Crawford landing another aggressive flurry on Alvarez, earning a loud reaction from the pro-Alvarez crowd. An accidental headbutt from him mid-round conveniently slowed the pace, but the uncharacteristic risks he was taking were still indicative of where his corner thought the scorecards were headed at that point.
Crawford, a native of Omaha, Neb., already was the only undisputed two-division champion in the four-belt era, but he moved up two weight classes to meet Alvarez (63-3-2, 39 KOs) at his natural 168-pound limit in order to make a reality perhaps the most anticipated fight in a decade. Alvarez had closed as between a -140 to -180 favorite in Las Vegas sportsbooks, putting Crawford’s opening bell odds between +115 and +157.
UFC and TK president Dana White’s TKO Boxing poster child Callum Walsh handily defeated Las Vegas native Fernando Vargas Jr. in the co-main event, earning a convincing unanimous decision with a dominant wire-to-wire effort that ended with a decisive 99-91, 99-91, 100-90 scorecard.
The main card also saw power puncher Christian Mbilli, a native of Cameroon, retain the WBC interim super middleweight title by fighting Lester Martinez, a native of Guatemala, to a split draw in a well-received brawl that the judges scored 97-93 for Martinez, 96-94 for Mbilli, and 95-95.
–Will Despart, Field Level Media
