Canelo Alvarez could be out for as long as a year after declaring that he picked up a hand injury before his trilogy fight with Gennady Golovkin last night.
The Mexican retained his undisputed super-middleweight title with a dominant victory over Golovkin to put an end to their years-long rivalry at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. However, it came at a cost as the pound-for-pound great irritated an injury that dates back to his fight with Caleb Plant last year and now faces 12 months on the sidelines.
Since joining up with Eddie Hearn and Matchroom Boxing during the pandemic, Alvarez has been famously active. He went about unifying the division by methodically picking off champions, as well as defending against his mandatory with four fights in a year before this year moving back up to light-heavyweight for an unsuccessful effort at Dmitry Bivol and a quick turnaround trilogy fight.
But he could miss the best part of the next 12 months, telling reporters at a post-fight press conference today that his hand is severely hurt. "It hurts everywhere," he said of the hand injury. "I've had these issues since the Caleb Plant fight so I was like 'it's okay, later, later'.
"And then I started [to feel] really bad, I need surgery. It was really bad, really bad. It's not broken it's a meniscus, it's a wrist injury, not broken. It's ligaments, like a knee injury or something like that... I'm going to take the time my body needs. Last year I fought four times in 11 months, so that's why. But I need to take my time a little bit, maybe May, September I need to take my time."
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Alvarez is said to have a TFCC tear, which is a cartilage in the wrist that has affected his body's abilities to move to joint without him feeling considerable pain. He has claimed that he couldn't even hold a glass at times, telling ESPN that it was "f***ed", and plans to chase down a rematch with Bivol once he is cleared for competition. Rehabilitation could take 8-12 weeks.
He feels that his lack of ability to train intensively as a result of the injury caused him to slow down in the later rounds against his rival, but ultimately he did enough to win the fight relatively comfortably. Two judges had him just one round away from a draw, although the other scorecard of 116-112 seemed more accurate.
"I think towards the end of the fight today I started to get a bit fatigued," Alvarez explained. "That's because we haven't been able to work explosively in the gym, but despite all of the problems that we've had I'm really happy with my performance tonight."
