Alvarez vs Khan results for the undercard here for you. Three bouts built up to the main event on HBO Pay-Per-View Saturday between middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez and Amir Khan:
******
Middleweight power punching veteran Curtis Stevens looked as good as he ever has, letting his hands go from the opening bell en route to a 2nd round knockout of prospect. Stevens (pictured) has always been far too oriented on landing picture-perfect power shots and ditching the rest of his offense, but trainer John David Jackson appears to have gotten him to abandon that. Teixeira was, to be sure, super-green. Maybe Stevens wasn’t too afraid of him and that’s why he started so hot. But it looked like his approach has shifted fundamentally. He hurt Teixeira with a jab in the very 1st round, then countered an uppercut — which landed — with an overhand right that left Teixeira down and woozy, unable to continue. Stevens earned himself one more big fight with this, perhaps, and he’ll offer a more dangerous version of his usual equation if he fights like this.
*****
You know who else looked as good as he ever has? Frankie Gomez, a much-ballyhooed prospect who’d gone off the rails some thanks to personal issues. The junior welterweight rendered Mauricio Herrera inert, neutering a clever, busy fighter who usually makes every round, win or lose, a huge struggle. Herrera couldn’t get in the fight for a second, thanks perhaps to age or weight struggles, but almost certainly because of what Gomez was doing: He was turning, giving Herrera angles, making it impossible for the 35-year-old to get off his pitty-pat combinations. Meanwhile, Gomez decorated Gomez’s mug with cuts and abrasions aplenty. Gomez won all 10 rounds and made Herrera look like he didn’t want to be a boxer anymore.
*****
The final bout of the undercard was the least useful or interesting; kinda gross, really. Middleweight David Lemieux figured to slaughter Glen Tapia, which he then did. He hurt Tapia with a body shot in the 1st round, then again periodically over the next couple. A pair of uppercuts had Tapia in rough shape in the 4th, then Lemieux dropped him a left hand followed by a cuffing right. Tapia’s corner stopped the fight, just how they should’ve before Tapia took a career-shortening beating from James Kirkland. Tapia was coming off another knockout loss, so the only point to this fight was giving Lemieux a get-well fight after the Gennady Golovkin loss. Don’t give him a guy like Tapia, though, who has already had his share of nasty beatings.
