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Brett OkamotoMay 4, 2025, 12:57 AM ET
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- Brett Okamoto has reported on mixed martial arts and boxing at ESPN since 2010. He has covered all of the biggest events in combat sports during that time, including in-depth interviews and features with names such as Dana White, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Georges St-Pierre. He was also a producer on the 30 for 30 film: “Chuck and Tito,” which looked back at the careers and rivalry of Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. He lives in Las Vegas, and is an avid, below-average golfer in his spare time.
Canelo Alvarez’s super middleweight title fight against William Scull felt like something of a formality going into Saturday. And a formality is exactly how it played out.
Alvarez (63-2-2, 39 KOs) became the undisputed 168-pound champion for the second time in his career, as he defeated Scull (23-1, 9 KOs) via decision in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. With the victory, Alvarez regained the IBF title that was stripped of him last year after he declined to face Scull.
Saturday’s win set up a highly anticipated matchup between Alvarez and Terence Crawford on Sept. 12 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Crawford was in attendance Saturday and immediately entered the ring to do a faceoff with Alvarez.
The end result was what the sport of boxing expected — and wanted — but it took a painful 12-round bout Saturday to make it official. Scull, a 32-year-old from Cuba, spent most of the championship bout dancing around the perimeter, throwing half-hearted jabs with little weight behind them. Alvarez pursued Scull from bell to bell, but refused to aggressively open up more than necessary.
It turned into a very easy fight to score in Alvarez’s favor, but a difficult one to watch. Alvarez won via scores of 119-109, 116-112 and 115-113.
“I don’t like to fight those kinds of guys,” Alvarez said. “They came to just survive to the final round. That’s why I don’t like to fight them. It won’t be that kind of fight [against Crawford]. I hate that kind of fight. He moved even more than we thought. But it’s OK. We won. We’re here.”
By contrast, Alvarez said it will be his “pleasure” to square off against an action fighter like Crawford.
“I feel great. Crawford is one of the best out there, and, you know, I like to share the ring with that kind of fighter,” Alvarez said. “It’s my pleasure.”
Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) offered little analysis of Alvarez’s performance, only saying, “He did what he had to do to get the job done, for what was in front of him.”
Alvarez and Scull both received warnings for inactivity, but that didn’t stop it from being a historically slow affair. The two combined for 445 punches thrown, according to CompuBox. That is the fewest number of combined punches thrown in a 12-round fight in CompuBox’s 40-year history. They each landed an almost incomprehensibly low average of five punches per round.
Nevertheless, Alvarez’s offense clearly surpassed Scull’s, as he targeted Scull’s body with power punches. It extended Alvarez’s winning streak to six, all of which have gone the distance. He has not scored a knockout since an 11th-round finish of Caleb Plant in November 2021. Scull, who went into Saturday as the IBF champion, suffered the first defeat of his career.
