Canelo Álvarez vs. Alfonso Gómez

After a successful defense against England's Ryan Rhodes in his hometown of Guadalajara, Jalisco,[5] Alvarez had various options to who defend his world title against next.[6] Former Contender Alfonso Gomez had recently stopped Calvin Green in two rounds, and sent out a challenge to the young champion soon after his victory at the Morongo Casino, Resort & Spa in California. His plan was to contend at Welterweight unless he could get a shot at Canelo.[7]

Alvarez kept his 154-pound title belt, stopping Gomez at 2:36 of the sixth round. Alvarez knocked down Gomez with a compact left hook late in the first round as more of a balance knockdown while the round was slow up to that point. Gomez rallied in the next few rounds and hung in with the hard-punching Alvarez, outworking and outlanding him by a large margin and giving him problems with his in-and-out movement, his jab, and combination punching. Gomez looked to be winning from the 2nd round to the first half of the 5th round. Alvarez seemingly was coming on in the second half of the fifth round, and he stopped Gomez near the end of the 6th, with a nasty uppercut stunning Gomez and a follow-up flurry forcing the stoppage. Gomez thought referee Wayne Hedgpeth stopped the fight too soon, with Alvarez raining blows on Gomez for about six seconds, but not many getting through his defense.[8] The general consensus (and HBO's take) was that the stoppage was very quick as well.