Canelo Alvarez did the job most expected, dominating his main event fight against Edgar Berlanga and retaining his WBC, WBA, and WBO super middleweight titles.
Judges scored the fight 117-110, 118-109, and 118-109.
Canelo (62-2-2, 39 KO) dropped Berlanga (22-1, 17 KO) in the third round on a perfectly-timed left hook, but Berlanga showed his toughness and willingness to fight, surviving that and going the distance with the far more experienced and frankly superior fighter.
There was a chippy flavor to the bout, too, with both of them fouling and retaliating, talking a lot of trash, mean mugging. The two did speak after the fight, and displayed respect for one another. Canelo said Berlanga “did good,” but admitted that he did get annoyed during the fight.
“My experience, my talent, my hard work, my intelligence — everything together,” Canelo said of how he won the fight. “If you have talent and you don’t have discipline, you have nothing. If you have discipline and don’t have talent, you have nothing. You need to combine both with hard work.”
Asked what he would do next, most likely on Cinco De Mayo weekend in 2025, Canelo as usual side-stepped the question for now, saying he would rest with his family and decide later.
“I fought a legend tonight, and hopefully this is the start of me becoming a future legend,” Berlanga said. “I took his best shot in the third round. I got dropped, I came back. I can hold these punches and return it. I could have done a lot more, but I was in there with a legend, man. My hats off to him and all of Mexico.”
“I told him he was my idol,” Berlanga said of the exchange they had after the fight. “I always looked up to him. I felt kinda bad we had to give bad blood to each other the first time we met. I watched him growing up. He’s at that level where he can pick and choose his (opponents), he’s a king, and I just want to give thanks to him for (choosing me).”