by Rick Reeno
MGM Grand, Las Vegas - Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer was very surprised with how easy Saul "Canelo" Alvarez dominated Alfredo Angulo on Saturday night. In nearly every round, Canelo landed his punches at will and barely missed any of his hard right hands. The fight was finally stopped by referee Tony Weeks in the tenth.
From the very first round, Angulo looked like a shadow of the fighter who dropped Erislandy Lara twice in a fight filled with fireworks in June of 2013. In that particular contest, Angulo was aggressive, throwing many power punch combinations and digging in with vicious hooks to the body.
Against Canelo, Angulo was slower than usual, his punches lacked any snap or authority behind them and he rarely put together any hard combinations - with the eight round being the only exception.
"We all knew that Angulo was not the fastest guy in the world. We all knew that. What I was surprised about was, he usually throws his punches with more authority and more bad intentions. He threw a lot of short punches and I was a bit surprised about that. There didn't seem to be that much power in those punches and that surprised me a little bit. You saw how dangerous he is in the eight round, when it suddenly became a slugfest. We know that Angulo is a heavy hitter and you saw that Canelo has a pretty darn good chin as well," Schaefer told krikya360.com.
"[Angulo] is a dangerous puncher and you can't keep your eyes off of him. He can change the fight with one punch, but tonight he really didn't seem to have too many of these punches which could become game-changers. There weren't too many of those. Like the punch that he landed which knocked down Lara. None of those punches he threw [with Canelo] had [that same kind of] authority or bad intentions."