How Many Fights Has Canelo Álvarez Lost and Against Whom?
Canelo Alvarez losses: three defeats in 68 fights — Mayweather (2013), Bivol (2022), and Crawford (2025). Here we review them.
Posted on 16/09/2025 at 12:10
- How many fights has Canelo Álvarez lost and against whom?
- Canelo Álvarez’s three defeats explained.
- Canelo Álvarez: 63-3-2 record and his setbacks.
The career of Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez is defined by victories: the first Mexican to unify all four super middleweight belts and a multi-division champion.
But the Guadalajara native has also faced defeat.
In 68 professional bouts, he has three losses and two draws.
Today his record stands at 63-3-2, and those three defeats — spread out over time and in very different contexts — help explain the evolution of his career and the high standard by which he is measured.
The First Stain: Mayweather, 2013
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On September 14, 2013, at just 23 years old, Canelo Álvarez faced Floyd Mayweather Jr., then 36, in Las Vegas. Both entered with near-identical records, fueling enormous anticipation.
The fight ended in a majority decision for “Money”: scorecards of 117-111 (Craig Metcalfe) and 116-112 (Dave Moretti), along with a controversial 114-114 (CJ Ross).
Despite the disputed draw, consensus was clear — Mayweather imposed his defensive mastery and tactical brilliance.
For Álvarez, the loss was an early lesson at the super welterweight elite level and a turning point that helped refine the skills that would later carry him to unification in another division.
The Failed Leap: Bivol, 2022
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Nine years later, Álvarez suffered another loss — this time without being knocked down, but outpointed on the cards by Russian Dmitry Bivol on May 5, 2022. Canelo had moved up to light heavyweight to challenge for Bivol’s WBA title.
Judges Tim Cheatham, Dave Moretti, and Steve Weisfeld all scored it 115-113 for the European champion.
The Mexican’s four super middleweight titles were not at stake, since he fought above his division.
But the bout exposed the physical and strategic challenge of facing a natural 175-pound champion with superior reach and distance control.
The Historic Night… and His Rival: Canelo vs Crawford, 2025
Photo: EFE. How many fights has Canelo Álvarez lost and against whom?
On September 13, 2025, in his natural super middleweight division, Canelo suffered his third defeat — this time against Terence Crawford, who had moved up nearly three weight classes to challenge him.
The decision was unanimous: 116-112 and 115-113 (twice) in favor of the American.
The win allowed “Bud” Crawford to seize all four 168-pound titles that Canelo had unified in 2021 and, in the process, become the first boxer in history to be undisputed champion in three different divisions.
For Álvarez, it was a crushing blow — both sporting and symbolic: a defeat in his own weight class and the loss of a reign that had placed him at the pinnacle of Mexican boxing history.
The Balance for Canelo Álvarez: Three Losses, a Legend in the Making
Each of the three defeats came against elite opponents: a defensive genius (Mayweather), a natural champion of a higher division (Bivol), and a pound-for-pound great who defied weight and triumphed (Crawford).
Even so, Álvarez’s record remains extraordinary: 63 wins, three losses, and two draws — against Jorge Juárez (2006) and Gennadiy Golovkin (2017) — plus more than a decade at the top facing the very best.
In a career already marked as historic, his setbacks do not diminish him. Instead, they highlight the caliber of challenges he chose and the magnitude of the champion he has been — and continues to be — every time he steps into the ring.
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