Dmitry Bivol showed off his bruised left arm on Sunday from his fight against Canelo Alvarez last Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The judges turned in this identical set of scores: 115-113, 115-113, and 115-113.
Boxing fans saw it as odd that the three judges would come up with the same scores for a fight that appeared to be a one-sided affair in which Canelo appeared to win no more than three rounds.
Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KO) appeared to be targeting WBA light heavyweight champion Bivol’s left bicep in an effort to weaken it to where he couldn’t use it during the fight.
However, that strategy failed to work for Canelo, as Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs) used in & out movement, fast combinations, and a powerful jab to dominate the fight to win a 12-round unanimous decision.
In Canelo’s fight against former WBA super-middleweight champion Callum Smith in December 2020, he targeted his left bicep with his punches, swelling it up.
Smith made it easy by fighting with his back against the ropes, not moving, allowing Canelo to hit him repeatedly on his bicep.
Bivol got the better of Canelo with his combination punching and excellent defensive skills. By the seventh round, Bivol says he noticed that Canelo was tired, and his condition worsened by the tenth round.
“I didn’t expect Canelo on his defense. I knew he had good defense, but it’s much better than I thought. Yeah, his upper body is good,” said Dmitry Bivol to Fight Hub TV, speaking a day after his upset victory over Canelo Alvarez.
“I think my plan was better than his,” Bivol continued when asked if he believes his size was what helped him defeat Canelo. “In the fight, I was 183 pounds.
“He’s strong, you saw it. His punch every time hard. I can make one more fight,” said Bivol laughing when asked how his bruised left arm felt.
“It wasn’t that I was pulling away [from Canelo]. It was that I was controlling the fight and that it was going the way I wanted,” Bivol said when asked at what point in the fight he felt he was starting to dominate Canelo.
“At the beginning, I felt I controlled it. Not too many punches at the beginning, but I see that I controlled. I studied his punches.
“When you control someone, it’s in your head. You can move back, you can move forward, and you can get the punches that you want. Sometimes you don’t get the punches that you want, but most of them you get. It means you control.
“Yeah, I felt that he was tired around seven rounds. Ten rounds, he was tired, yeah,” Bivol said while imitating Canelo’s facial expression with his mouth open, looking exhausted.
Canelo says he wants a rematch with Bivol, but we’ll see if he actually goes through with it. Sometimes fighters say things while they’re still amped up after a fight, but then they change their minds later.
