Former world champion Eleider Alvarez wanted a way to get himself back into the title race. He is one step closer to doing that.

At the Turning Stone Resort and Casino in Verona, Alvarez (25-1, 13 KOs) scored a knockout victory over Michael Seals (24-3, 18 KOs) in the 7th round of a light heavyweight bout where Alvarez won two minor titles but more importantly gets him in the conversation as a world title contender once again. He gets the win over Seals, who had came into the fight with a four fight winning streak.

This fight was predicted to be a slugfest of sorts as both Alvarez and Seals having power behind their punches. It didn’t live up to that expectation as the pace was slow throughout the fight. Seals looked to be cautious of the right hand by Alvarez and just threw one punch at a time for the duration of the bout. Alvarez was dodging or blocking most of those punches, and was able to land his jab better than Seals. The jab got him through most of the fight until the right hand stunned Seals before the end of the 5th round. That punch woke Seals up but not enough for him to respond back, and that same right hand put him down to the canvas with his head landing on the ropes for the referee to start the count. He was unable to beat the count and Alvarez got his first win since losing the WBO title to Sergey Kovalev in their rematch last year.

Alvarez was proud of getting the victory after his extended layoff. “I was out of the ring for 11 months,” he said after the fight. “I wanted to come back as the fighter that beat Kovalev, and this is what we practiced for.”

He was working on landing that right hand in preparation for this fight, and he brought up that his trainer Marc Ramsey pushed for it because Ramsey felt that he was not throwing it enough.

“During training camp, we practiced {the right hand} over and over. My trainer was mad at me at first because I wasn’t doing what he was asking. Finally, we got the knockout.”

With this win, Alvarez is likely to face Joe Smith Jr. who defeated Jesse Hart in Atlantic City last week. The winner of that fight will possibly fight for the WBO title by the end of the year. If so, then it would be the second time that Alvarez could win that title.