DOWNSIZED

ALVAREZ-SMITH

SELDOM have pre-fight head-to-head photos meant so much to so many and then ultimately meant nothing as those capturing Saul “Canelo” Alvarez looking up at Callum Smith days before the Mexican cut the taller man down to size and took his WBA super-middleweight title, and the vacant WBC belt, at the Alamodome, San Antonio.

If the fight became the enduring image, fight week served as a reminder that boxing fans are guilty of seeing what they want to see, rather than the reality, and that the same is also true of fighters, whose success relies upon a certain suspension of disbelief. Here, in the case of Alvarez and Smith, a collective desire to see a competitive fight end a miserable year led to plenty believing images of the two super-middleweights standing head-to-head at the weigh-in was indication of a potential upset. Predictions were changed. Past form ignored. Smith, meanwhile, was just as guilty