The Hottest Boxing Storylines for the Week of September 18
Canelo Alvarez added a fourth world championship to his trophy case in an entertaining but mostly one-sided knockout win over previously unbeaten Brit Liam Smith on Saturday night in front of 50,000-plus fans at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
We've beaten to death the subject of why this wasn't the fight that fans wanted or the sport needed, but we'll do our best to give an honest assessment of what Canelo proved by winning the fight in exactly the way most expected.
Oleksandr Usyk is probably the best fighter in the sport that many of you have never seen or heard from before. The Ukrainian added a boxing world championship to his Olympic gold medal with a thrashing of Krzysztof Glowacki on Saturday night in Poland.
We ponder his position in the suddenly resurgent cruiserweight division.
All that, plus we discuss the prospects of a Roman Gonzalez vs. Naoya Inoue fight, whether Danny Garcia is making himself irrelevant and the latest on Billy Joe Saunders and his plans to return to the ring.
These are the hottest boxing storylines for the week!
What Did Canelo Prove?
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Canelo proved a couple of things in his ninth-round stoppage of Smith for the WBO Junior Middleweight Championship Saturday night in the heart of Texas.
He's capable of drawing in a huge crowed (over 50,000 fans at AT&T Stadium) but is hopelessly behind Gennady Golovkin in the public relations battle that has broken out between the fighters over why the biggest fight in the sport seems a ways away yet.
Canelo didn't have any major difficulties with Smith. The Brit proved tough, brave and outgunned—three things we knew when the fight was announced and didn't particularly need to see to believe in the ring.
Smith gave it everything he had. He found himself in the fight after a rough opening round but didn't have the punching power to ding a man whom anyone with two working eyes could see was bigger and stronger.
By the end of the night, Smith had a busted eye and probably some reorganized insides as a result of Canelo's vicious body assault that left him writhing on the mat and prompted the stoppage.
The main event of the evening was HBO's Max Kellerman pressing the GGG issue with Canelo in the center of the ring and a grinning Oscar De La Hoya standing just behind his cinnamon-haired charge. There was some talk of why, some De La Hoya bashing and several declarations by Canelo that he was the best in the sport.
He's the biggest draw, that's for sure. But the razor barbs of whether he was hiding behind his promoter seemed to sting, so much so that Canelo ended the interview abruptly by just walking away after saying his piece.
What did he prove?
Canelo is a megastar, but he won't escape the shadow of Golovkin until he faces him in the ring.
Does Usyk Belong at the Top of the Cruiserweight Ranks?
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Usyk was already an Olympic gold medalist for Ukraine when he walked into the Ergo Arena in Poland Saturday night and dominated Glowacki to capture a share of the cruiserweight title in just his 10th professional fight.
Sure, it wasn't the barnburner that many hoped for, but Usyk demonstrated tremendous boxing ability to easily beat down the hometown fighter who had knocked out Marco Huck and soundly defeated Steve Cunningham in his previous two outings.
Both Usyk and Glowacki came into the fight carrying reputations for big punching power.
But while Usyk was able to box effectively behind his jab and footwork—particularly for a fighter of his size (6'3")—the now-former WBO cruiserweight champion seemed to be chasing one big shot that never came. Glowacki looked slow and just couldn't get his punches to the target.
It might be just a tad early to be ranking Usyk on pound-for-pound lists—though that's coming before you know it—but he's probably already tops of his division. And that's no small praise these days.
The cruiserweights, long dormant and often overlooked just a tick below the heavyweights, are alive and well. The division boasts its deepest pool of talent in years, and the new champion has plenty of great challenges to weigh in the near future.
Could Chocolatito-Inoue Happen Sooner Than Expected?
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Chocolatito is boxing's consensus top pound-for-pound fighter and survived a difficult back-and-forth bout with Mexico's Carlos Cuadras to capture a world title in a fourth weight division on September 10 in Los Angeles.
The fight was much closer than the official scorecards would indicate. Gonzalez did get the deserved victory, but Cuadras accounted well for himself and should be in line to receive a rematch in the not-distant future.
If not a Cuadras redux, then Chocolatito has a monster to handle.
And for Gonzalez, this new foe could prove to be the biggest fight in the lower weight class in recent memory.
Japanese prodigy Naoya Inoue was in attendance on fight night to see the Nicaraguan battle Cuadras, and that led to speculation about the possibility of a matchup between the sport's top pound-for-pound fighter and one of its most exciting young champions.
Inoue, like Gonzalez, holds a share of the super flyweight championship and is undefeated in 11 professional bouts. He's just 23 years old but already a two-time, two-division world champion with wins over quality fighters such as Adrian Hernandez and Omar Narvaez.
A fight between the two would be huge among the hardcore sort of boxing fans, and it can't happen soon enough. With any luck, early next year these two can get that fight signed, sealed and delivered for supremacy in the 115-pound division.
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Has Danny Garcia Made Himself Irrelevant?
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At this point we're beginning to wonder what goes through Garcia's head.
He's frequently—and not without much validity—skewered on social media for cherry-picking his opponents. It seems to bother him because he often responds and defends what has too frequently become the indefensible.
Garcia looked like a future star when he scored an upset win over Lucas Matthysse on the Floyd Mayweather-Canelo PPV undercard in Las Vegas in 2013. Since then, he's taken a series of increasingly soft fights against opponents who did nothing to challenge him or endear him to the fans.
The Philadelphian followed Matthysse up with what should have been a loss against Mauricio Herrera, a disgraceful mismatch against Rod Salka, a close (some felt he lost) decision over Lamont Peterson and then a pair of shot welterweights in Paulie Malignaggi and Robert Guerrero.
The latter fight netted him a world title that it was widely reported he would defend against Andre Berto, another fighter who is looking at his best days in the rearview mirror, in the fall. That fight was bad enough, but even it appears dead now.
Will Esco of Bad Left Hook reports that the Berto fight is dead and Garcia will likely make the first defense of his 147-pound title against John Molina.
Yep, that John Molina.
Molina scored an impressive upset win over Ruslan Provodnikov to keep his career alive in June, but he's just 2-3 over his last five bouts and is not a welterweight. He's unranked by the WBC at welterweight (he doesn't fight there) but is the organization's No. 4 contender a weight division below.
The fans won't like this one if it's announced, and they shouldn't.
Garcia just seems bent on adding fuel to the fire, and that's a shame since he fights in a division with Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter and Errol Spence Jr., among others, that could create exciting fights.
Is Billy Joe Saunders Finally Ready to Fight?
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Saunders has been out of action since taking the WBO Middleweight Championship from Andy Lee last December in a mostly dreadful fight. He's held that middleweight belt hostage while turning down several attractive fights, including one that would have seen him co-feature last Saturday's Canelo-Smith PPV.
That hasn't stopped him from running his mouth, though.
Saunders released a video shortly after Golovkin's bludgeoning of Kell Brook that said he was ready to accept the challenge of the Kazakh fighter for all the 160-pound gold. Not a lot of people seem to buy into the seriousness of that challenge, given the U.K. fighter's reluctance to do much of anything since winning his belt.
It does seem, however, that a return to the ring is in the offing.
ESPN.com's Dan Rafael reports that Saunders will defend his middleweight title on the undercard of Tyson Fury's rematch with Wladimir Klitschko for the former's world heavyweight championship October 29 in Manchester, England.
His opponent will either be the WBO's No. 7 contender Artur Akavov (16-1, 7 KO) of Russia or the WBO's No. 11 contender Rob Brant (21-0, 14 KO) of the United States. To say that neither Akavov nor Brant has beaten anyone resembling an opponent of note would be an understatement.
And it's an even worse look for Saunders, who turned down Willie Monroe Jr. and Gabe Rosado because they weren't big enough for his liking. Granted, those guys stunk out the joint Saturday, but at least people knew who they were.
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