EDDY REYNOSO IS carrying Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez on his shoulders. It’s Cinco de Mayo weekend, one of the most important days in boxing. And the two, Reynoso as trainer, Álvarez as his boxer, are celebrating another win surrounded by the largest indoor crowd to ever watch a boxing match in the United States. Just seconds before, inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, with 73,126 people in attendance, Billy Joe Saunders, or his corner — whichever version of the story you believe — said they’d had enough.
It wasn’t illogical to think Saunders would be Álvarez’s most formidable opponent in years. He was an undefeated world champion, a slick southpaw from England who’d frustrated opponents confident they could hurt him. But, perhaps most importantly, Saunders is a natural antagonist. His personality often crosses the line between confidence and arrogance, someone who relished fighting in a stadium with enough people to rival the population of a mid-sized Texas town, of which only about a dozen wanted to see him win.
2:16
Canelo Álvarez describes what becoming undisputed champion would mean to his career.
“You’ve never been in the ring with someone like me,” Saunders warned Canelo before the fight. Once the fight started, and the crowd yelled so loud it made your ears ring and your chest pound, Álvarez handled him with relative ease. For good measure, he broke the right side of Saunders’s face.
“I felt it when I hit him,” Álvarez says now, in Spanish, of the right uppercut that damaged Saunders. When you punch people for a living, you can feel and hear when your fists have cracked bones. “I saw all this caved in,” Álvarez says, pointing at his cheekbone, slowly dragging his finger under his right eye. He explains how he broke Saunders — with the casualness of someone talking about the weather.
“I saw this other part raised,” Álvarez continues, pointing beside his eye by his temple. “That’s why I started urging the crowd to get loud. I knew once the round…
Source : espn
