NEW YORK (AP) — Canelo Alvarez threw a Garden party Saturday night. A short and powerful fiesta.
Alvarez landed dozens of body punches, knocking down Rocky Fielding four times and stopping him in the third round Saturday night to earn his third weight class title, taking the WBA super middleweight belt.
Coming off his close decision against Gennady Golovkin three months ago to take the WBA and WBC middleweight titles, Alvarez could hear chants of "Canelo! Canelo!" long before he entered the Madison Square Garden ring for the first time. Throughout a lengthy undercard, it was clear who the sellout crowd of 20,112 came to see and cheer.
He delivered with power and precision.
Only eight other Mexican fighters have held three division titles. And Alvarez, 28, says he is headed back to the 160-pound class he rules, with possibly a third go with Golovkin in 2019. If this was a one-off, it was quite a show in his debut at Madison Square Garden.
Fielding, 31, won the WBA crown in July when he knocked out Tyron Zeuge in Germany in the fifth round. But the Englishman had never faced anyone close to Canelo's class, and it showed.
The fight ended with 22 seconds remaining in the third after two knockdowns in the round.
Fielding came to fight, but was outmanned from the outset. He couldn't block the bevy of body punches launched by Alvarez, who floored Fielding with a left in the first round.
Alvarez did it again with a right to the head and a left to the body late in the second round, and that brought down Fielding's hands enough to expose the head.
So Alvarez used a huge right lead to knock down Fielding in the third round, and soon after finished it with a series of blows.
It really was no contest.
