Declan Warrington
@decwarrington
RINGSIDE
Reporters’ star ratings for main events and undercards are based on in-ring entertainment, competitiveness and whether overall expectation was met
SINCE close to the opening bell of his defeat at light heavyweight in May 2022 by Dmitry Bivol, suggestions have grown more widespread that Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez is in decline.
He was as convincingly outboxed that night as he was by Floyd Mayweather in 2013, and when four months after losing to Bivol he returned to super-middleweight against the declining Gennady Golovkin – a natural middleweight – and earned a unanimous decision he far from made the statement he had intended. Eight months later against John Ryder he repeatedly tried, and ultimately struggled, to record his first stoppage since that of Caleb Plant in November 2021, and Jermell Charlo’s lack of ambition last September made winning inside the distance similarly difficult for him to achieve.
That 2023 was the year in which Naoya Inoue and Terence Crawford recorded their finest victories – with masterful performances that proved that they are at their peak – did little to help Alvarez’s assertion that he remains the world’s finest fighter, but the nature of his unanimous decision victory over his fellow Mexican, the improving, showed that he has a considerable amount left to give. The time may even come when it is reflected that, not unlike Mayweather loss that triggered his improvement into so cultured and intelligent a fighter, the defeat by Bivol started a period in which he evolved.
