Alfredo Angulo dismisses talk that he threw fight with Canelo Alvarez

There was some chatter over the last week that Alfredo Angulo may have "thrown" his fight with Canelo Alvarez, which could be chalked up to the skepticism of boxing fans in general, or the fact that Angulo just didn't look good at any point in the fight, or the fact that people didn't like the stoppage, or whatever.

But Angulo dismisses any such talk:

"To all of the people who think that I was paid off - I've told you before that 'Perro' is not for sale. We started a little different. We started slow and planned to increase in the end, but we never reached that point. Unfortunately I wanted to close hard in the later rounds and we already know that Canelo is always tired [at the end], but unfortunately what happened happened...controversy. I don't have to bow my head. I was doing my job and people know that the fight be changed with a single blow.

"I struggled to catch my rhythm in the first six rounds, but when I started to get into a rhythm, I began to throw more combinations and connected much more on Canelo, and that's when I think [Weeks] made the decision to stop the fight because we had already begun to get in the fight. Even in the previous round, Canelo was going to the ropes with his hands down because he was tired."

If Angulo (22-4, 18 KO) were throwing the fight, he sure went about it in an awful way, taking a sustained beating for nine-plus rounds and getting cracked constantly by hard shots to both the body and head. In short, the idea that he was taking a dive seems a little silly -- that was just too much punishment to take without the intent of winning.

A more likely explanation for the fight going the way it did is simple: Canelo put the hurt on Angulo quickly, sapped his power (and Angulo looked like he might have overtrained somewhat, too), and the game plan to wait for Canelo to tire himself out backfired. It was a thorough and often savage, one-sided beating.