Alvarez beats Ryder to retain super middleweight crown

Canelo Alvarez wins the world super middleweight title in his first fight in his native Mexico in 12 years.

Canelo Alvarez has retained his undisputed world super middleweight title, defeating John Ryder in front of over 50,000 fans in his first fight in Mexico since 2011.

Alvarez clinched victory with scores of 120-107 on one map and 118-109 on the other two to improve to 59-2-2.

“I hit him on the head too much and he didn’t go down,” Alvarez said after Saturday night’s fight at Akron’s open-air stadium in his hometown of Guadalajara.

Alvarez and Ryder started a slow fight in the first two rounds, but Alvarez made direct contact with the right and Ryder started bleeding from the nose after the third round.

The Mexican continued to press in the fourth round, landing body shots and then sending Ryder to the mat with a right hook to the chin.

Ryder made Alvarez uncomfortable in the fifth and landed a few shots to the Mexican’s face, but Alvarez landed another right in the ninth. Ryder stumbled, but gathered and answered with a shot that shook the Mexican.

Alvarez admitted that he wasn’t quite sure about his left hand from the opening bell.

“It took me a few rounds to start hitting and knowing I’m good with the hand,” he said. “Now I know.”

Ryder, with a bloodied face, finished the fight well in the final two rounds, but was not enough to upset.

“He’s probably over his best, he couldn’t get me out, he wanted to stop me and couldn’t,” Ryder told the media after the fight.

“It could have been a little bit different without the problem with my nose. It took me a few rounds to adjust.”

It was Alvarez’s first fight since undergoing surgery on his left wrist last March. Before the fight, he said the injury slowed him down in his previous four fights, including his loss to light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol a year ago.

After a hard-fought victory over Ryder, Alvarez has set his sights on a rematch against the Russian in September.

“That’s what we’re aiming for, but we’ll see,” he said.