Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez represented Floyd Mayweather’s biggest threat the night of September 14, 2013, when they fought at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand.
The long-sought-after fight between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao retained greater commercial appeal, but the signs of decline witnessed in Pacquiao, and to a lesser degree his rival as their era’s finest fighter, meant that the bigger, younger, undefeated Alvarez was rightly regarded as the fighter likeliest to bring Mayweather’s undefeated status to an end.
If Mayweather proved himself the finest boxer of his era, he similarly might also have been its finest matchmaker. Since his fight in May 2007 with Oscar De La Hoya at light middleweight, he had relished significant advantages in either age or weight.
When he next fought Ricky Hatton, it was at 147lbs, where the natural super lightweight Hatton had previously only ever fought once and struggled. The great Juan Manuel Márquez, who came next, moved from lightweight to welterweight having first become a champion at featherweight, and was sufficiently sluggish that it consistently showed.
Shane Mosley was considerably past his peak when they fought at welterweight, which by then was his natural weight division. Victor Ortiz had recently moved to welterweight from super lightweight. Miguel Cotto was past his peak at light middleweight – Cotto, like Mayweather, was at his best at 147lbs – and Robert Guerrero had also recently been at 135lbs.
In monitoring Alvarez’s progress and growing popularity, Mayweather, as with the many other illustrious names on one of the most decorated of all professional records, identified outside of Pacquiao not only the most lucrative existing opponent, but the opportune time for them to fight.
Alvarez, aged 23, was threatening to outgrow the light-middleweight division and, blessed with the calibre of boxing IQ that only Mayweather and the most celebrated fighters were capable of surpassing, was continuing to improve. Not unlike Mayweather, 36 the night they fought, Alvarez was proving among the best at reading his opponents and making the necessary adjustments needed to adapt and win.
Also not unlike other elite fighters there were times he absorbed his opponent’s strengths – his improvement for his rematch with Gennady Golovkin in 2018 demonstrated that more effectively than any other fight he was involved in – which meant that with each encounter with a different nature of opponent he would emerge improved before confronting the next.
Aware of that ongoing progress and the fact that calls for him to fight Alvarez would grow, Mayweather used his influence as the world’s leading fighter to negotiate a fight between them at 152lbs – two fewer than the Mexican had become comfortable at – and their date, in the city he had increasingly come to symbolise, was set.
So dominant was Mayweather across the course of the 12 rounds they shared that only the score of 117-111 was considered accurate. The 116-112 in his favour did not quite reflect the extent to which he outclassed his younger opponent – the additional two pounds in weight Alvarez would have favoured would ultimately have made minimal difference – and the 114-114 from CJ Ross has become one of the most criticised fight scores of all time.
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Alvarez, the prodigy who had fought and beaten men as a teenager, had lost for the very first time. Where Mayweather had succeeded De La Hoya as his sport’s leading figure when he defeated him, the plans for Alvarez to do the same by defeating Mayweather collapsed. Alvarez quickly learned he hadn’t the speed and abilities to succeed with his game plan, and he was being read, and made to miss and countered by Mayweather to such an extent that he became hesistant, and to some observers’ minds had been exposed.
Few fighters, after so chastening a defeat, ever truly recover. Alvarez wasn’t brutally beaten up that night by Mayweather but he had ruthlessly been made aware of his vincibility. Kelly Pavlik was once similarly regarded and yet never the same after losing to Bernard Hopkins in 2008; David Price, once widely considered a future world heavyweight champion, never recovered his equilibrium after being stopped by Tony Thompson in 2013.
Alvarez, however, proved considerably different. After stopping Alfredo Angulo in a rebuilding fight six months later and back at the very same venue, he fought Erislandy Lara – the polished Cuban boxer with some of the qualities Mayweather had used to defeat him – and beat him on points. Three fights later, when again in Vegas he stopped Amir Khan, the first fight between he and the feared Golovkin was the fight the world wanted to see, and because Alvarez was considered capable of rivalling him.
It took until four years after the date with Mayweather for the first of Alvarez’s three fights with Golovkin to happen, when over the course of 12 high-quality and brutal rounds they fought to a draw. Without the lessons learned in defeat by Mayweather, Alvarez would likely have lost that night against Golovkin. He may even have lost to Lara, or become impatient against Khan when throughout the opening rounds he was being outboxed.
By the time he had finished defeating Golovkin with an improved performance in September 2018, Mayweather had retired as a professional and Alvarez had not only succeeded him as the world’s highest-profile fighter, he was rivalling the great Vasyl Lomachenko as its best.
Alvarez and Marquez – who later stopped Pacquiao – are perhaps alone in reaching greater heights after defeat by Mayweather. Few had the hunger to fully rebuild after being paid the biggest purse of their careers; even fewer improved instead of regressing with their increased knowledge of their limitations, because so few had either Mexicans’ conviction or mental strength.