16. Canelo Alvarez (63-3-2, 39 KOs)
Santos Saul Alvarez Barragan was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico on July 18th 1990. He is the youngest of eight children and the seventh to step in the boxing ring. He started at age 13 after being raised in the family farm. Alvarez was under the guidance of the father-son duo of Chepo and Eddy Reynoso as an amateur, and it was then when he got the nickname “Canelo”.
Alvarez had a brief stint in the amateur ranks before stepping in the ring as a professional, which took place on October 29th 2005 against Abraham Gonzalez. At 15 years old, he already had five pro fights. In 2008, he made history with his brothers as they set the Guinness World Record for the most siblings to fight on the same professional boxing card. By the end of 2010, “Canelo” had 35 wins on his record.
In the following year, Alvarez faced Matthew Hatton for the WBC super welterweight championship. He defeated Hatton by decision to become the youngest super welterweight champion in history at 20 years old. After five defenses of that title which included wins over Kermit Cintron, Shane Mosley, and Josesito Lopez, Alvarez faced Austin Trout in 2013 for the WBC, WBA, and Ring Magazine titles at super welterweight. Alvarez scored a knockdown en route to a unanimous decision victory, making him a unified champion at age 22. Five months later he faced WBA super champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. Alvarez suffered his first loss of his pro career against Mayweather by majority decision.
After the loss to Mayweather, Alvarez went on to win seven fights in a row which included a victory over Miguel Cotto to become the WBC middleweight champion. On September 16th 2017, he fought unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin to a draw. A rematch was set one year later where Alvarez got the win by majority decision. He went on to defeat Rocky Fielding in December 2018 to win a super middleweight title, then in 2019 he defeated Daniel Jacobs and Sergey Kovalev. With the Kovalev win he became a four division world champion.
Following his win over Kovalev, Alvarez went back to the super middleweight division to face Callum Smith for the WBC and WBA super middleweight titles. He won by unanimous decision, then defended those titles against Avni Yildirim two months later. Alvarez stopped Yildirim in three rounds then had his next bout against Billy Joe Saunders with the WBO super middleweight title on the line. In that bout, Alvarez scored a TKO victory to have three of the four major titles at super middleweight. In November of 2021, Alvarez faced Caleb Plant for the undisputed championship. In the 11th round of that fight, Alvarez scored two knockdowns en route to defeating Plant by technical knockout. With the win, he became the first fighter to unify all four belts at super middleweight division.
In May of 2022, Alvarez returned to the light heavyweight division to face WBA champion Dmitrii Bivol. Alvarez lost by unanimous decision, and went back to super middleweight to defend the undisputed title against Gennady Golovkin. He won that bout by unanimous decision, then successfully defended the title five times from May 2023 to May 2025. In that two year time span he beat John Ryder, Jermell Charlo, Jaime Munguia, Edgar Berlanga, and William Scull.
On September 13th 2025, Alvarez faced multi division champion Terence Crawford in Las Vegas. This fight was defined as “Once In A Lifetime”, with both fighters at the top of many pound for pound rankings. The bout went for 12 rounds and Crawford won by decision becoming the new undisputed super middleweight champion.
Soon after the bout, Alvarez went through surgery on his left elbow and currently is preparing for a return to the ring against Christian Mbilli for the WBC super middleweight title.
