Canelo Alvarez went to Saudi Arabia with no belt and came home with the WBC title. In this Mill City Boxing reaction, posted on Halloween night’s aftermath, the host walks through a unanimous decision over Christian Mbilli that he scored as a sharp, controlled night’s work: Canelo dictated the pace, showed a great jab, and put on the kind of defence the host kept coming back to — great tonight, by his account, in his first fight back after losing to Terence Crawford.
Mbilli did what Mbilli does — he tried to push the pace, high tempo, everything on his shoulders — but the host saw the challenger’s accuracy suffer and thought he looked a little tired as the rounds stacked up. Then the host stopped the breakdown cold and asked for a round of applause for Mbilli anyway, and his reason deserves printing exactly as he framed it: per the host, Mbilli’s mother passed away while he was going through training camp, and he still walked into the hardest fight of his life and went the distance with Canelo Alvarez. Whatever the scorecards said, that is not a small thing, and the host was right to say it out loud.
The what-next talk is where this host plants his flag — and it is the opposite flag from AKHi’s. Interim WBC champion Lester Martinez was in the building and ready, the host noted, the kind of man who can push a pace. Stablemate Jaime Munguia won on the same night and holds a title, so a rematch sits there as a question. But Hamzah Sheeraz, who was also in the building, gets no such grace here: the host says Sheeraz ducked his own test, cannot hold down his title, and does not deserve a Canelo fight at all. He also noted the WBO title sitting vacant and an English IBF holder he rates as no match — then threw the question to the fans: who do you want next?
Our take: whatever anyone thinks of the matchup, a beltless Canelo flying into Riyadh and leaving champion again is the sport’s centre of gravity reasserting itself. Fannon questioned whether this fight should have been staged there at all — it was, it is over, and the result now runs the division. The honest next fight is the one with a pace Canelo cannot coast through. Martinez is already holding a piece of the same belt. Start there.
Video credit: Mill City Boxing.
