World Boxing Council President Mauricio Sulaiman has no problem with last week’s close decision, which gave Canelo Alvarez a twelve round majority win over Gennady Golovkin to capture the WBC, WBA middleweight titles.
Before a packed crowd at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Canelo fought his way to a 7-5 win on two of the three scorecards. One judge had it a 114-114 draw, with the remaining two tabbing cards of 115-113 for Canelo.
In September 2017, they fought to a controversial twelve round split draw.
Some fans were still not happy with the outcome, and felt Golovkin had done enough to win a close decision.
Sulaiman agrees the contest was razor close and Canelo did what he needed to do to gain the win.
“You have to take the opportunity to review [the fight], I do not think there is a person who can say that the fight was not very close, one judge had it a draw, the other judges had it by a round in other direction, giving the victory to Canelo – and because of that it is difficult to categorize the outcome as a theft when these facts are there,” Sulaiman said.
“The fight was great, and everything that was criticized about Canelo in the first one, this time he did it the other way around… Canelo went forward, threw more punches and fought. To reflect on it, Canelo deserved the win.”
There is now talk that Canelo will either fight on a date in December or more likely in May of next year, during Cinco De Mayo weekend. Canelo suffered a cut during the win over Golovkin and it hasn’t been determined just how long it will take to heal up.
The fight last Saturday was the first bout for Canelo in a year. He was scheduled to fight Golovkin in May, but their fight was pushed back after Canelo tested positive for a banned substance.
- Boxingscene