Canelo Alvarez defeats Austin Trout via decision; Omar “El Panterita” Figueroa defeats Abner Cotto via KO

Omar Figueroa walking away after knocking Cotto out.

On Saturday night, Canelo Alvarez had his stiffest test to date with Austin Trout. In front of 39,472 fans, Canelo successfully unified the WBC and WBA championships to the delight of many. In my estimation, we saw a close and competitive affair for 12 rounds.

The judges ruled the fight for Canelo – 115-112, 116-111, and 118-109. I find the latter scorecard to be quite ridiculous. A lot of people have different thoughts on what happened on Saturday and what they saw in the ring that evening. Most can agree with the following:

1. Austin Trout threw more punches.
2. Austin Trout landed more punches.
3. Austin Trout missed a lot of punches.
4. Canelo Alvarez showed incredible defense.
5. Canelo Alvarez was landing the harder, more significant blows.
6. Canelo Alvarez had the upper-hand with damage.

From those six points, you can take from that what you’d like. After watching it live at the Alamodome and on Showtime TV the next day, I wasn’t confident at all in my own scorecard. Some rounds were awfully difficult to score. At the end of the fight, I thought it was a fair decision for Canelo – as did Austin Trout in his post-fight interview.

Overall, I thought it was an excellent bout that answered a lot of questions  of where both boxers are at right now. The highlight of the scrap was the memorable knockdown in the 7th frame, which was a huge moment for Canelo. It was also great to see Trout recover nicely and have success later in that round.

On one final note for Canelo-Trout, I really don’t want to see any more open scoring. It’s unfortunate that it’s a thing but I just don’t see any value in it.

Before Canelo and Trout stepped into the ring, Weslaco’s Omar “El Panterita” Figueroa reminded us que el es uno de los mas exciting fighters around today. Figueroa isn’t afraid of anything, he’s honest about his thoughts and he’s open about getting in your face and pounding his fists into another human being as hard as humanly possible. Would Abner Cotto be the man to give El Panterita some competition? Well after 2 minutes and 57 seconds of action, Figuroa’s power was just way too much for Cotto. He managed to drop Cotto once early on, before finishing him off in the corner with a wicked body shot for the KO win.

At this point, Figueroa is going to be fighting on a July 27th tripleheader in San Antonio, TX. The card – which is scheduled to take place at the AT&T Center – will also feature Andre Berto vs Jesus Soto Karass and Keith Thurman vs Diego Chavez. No word on who Figueroa’s opponent will be.