Last night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, the crowd witnessed what was clearly a fight of the year candidate when Saul Canelo Álvarez took on the undefeated Gennady Golovkin in a 12 round middleweight showdown for the ages. There is just one problem with the fight of the year and that is that it ended in one of the most controversial manners when the fight was declared a split draw. The fight was ruled a draw after judge Don Trella scored the bought 114-114, but the real mystery belongs to Adalaide Byrd who scored the fight 118-110 in favor of Álvarez who in the eyes of many did not win the fight. All of us were left wondering what boxing match did Byrd watch and how much was she paid to throw the monkey wrench in their. In all fairness to her, it was at times a difficult match to score depending on what you think wins a round. Clearly Álvarez did enough in her eyes to win that many rounds in the fight with his counter punching and body shots. The first three rounds did belong to Alvarez out right and the last two rounds of the fight could have been scored in either direction. However, you can not tell me that rounds four through ten did not belong to GGG. The man was a workhorse who should absolutely no fear as he punched and jabbed his way through Canelo’s power punching attack.
After all of that, what does this mean for the sport of boxing and will they recover from this after they had been selling it as the fight of the year? Oscar De Lay Hoya, whose Golden Boy Promotions handled the fight, had been telling us for weeks that we were getting a real fight after the Mayweather/McGregor sideshow that we had seen weeks before. This was a fight that featured two of the best that the sport had to offer and this is the result that you give the fans, a draw? Teddy Atlas may have a had a point in saying that this is why people feel that the sport is corrupted and that judges are easily paid off at times or at least we are left to wonder that. If you are striving to make a point to make Boxing the popular sport over Mixed Martial Arts then this is not how you do it. This is exactly the reason why people tune in to the UFC and why their PPV buyouts have been insane over the last five or so years. Gone are the days of seeing so many top contenders in boxing like Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Hector Camacho, Thomas Hearns, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Julio Cesar Chavez, Pernell Whitaker, Vinny Pazienza, Felix Trinidad, Fernando Vargas, and so many more. Those were the golden years at least for me anyways, but I am hoping that Boxing can recover from this and that we will continue to see amazing fights. The only question left now as well is are you going to be buying Canelo vs GGG part two? Check out the Adalaide Byrd’s scorecard below and I wanted to tell you that I scored the fight 116-112 in favor of GGG, you can also see that card below hers.