Saul Alvarez vs Liam Smith: Sobering week for British boxers ends with all eyes on Canelo vs Gennady Golovkin

Alvarez was brilliant in taking Smith apart and ended the bout with a ninth-round body shot

Liam Smith was floored by a left-hook body shot in the ninth round (Getty)

Alvarez is very good.

It requires bravery, belief and a bit of stupidity to keep getting up and fighting round after round in a lost cause in front of 51,420 delirious fans.

On Saturday night at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Liam Smith was cut, hit low and dropped heavily three times before the end in round nine of a memorable, bloody and painful fight with Saul Canelo Alvarez.

Smith tried absolutely everything that is legal to win and was still throwing punches when the final sickening short left hook under his right elbow sent him down in sudden, unforgiving pain. Nobody can survive a punch like that from a master like Alvarez. The ref waved it off in instant recognition of the savagery caused by the six-inch flight of the last punch. Alvarez had won Smith's WBO Light-middleweight belt but the bauble's relevancy had gone long before the fight was over.

"If anybody thinks I'm happy with losing in a massive fight, in a stadium and against a great fighter then they are wrong," said Smith. "I came here as the champion, I came here to win and not to make up the numbers. I'm gutted and when I'm alone I will probably have a cry. I was here to win." Smith's words were squeezed out through a mouth and jaw swollen from Alvarez's punches. The butterfly stitches attached to the wounds in and above his right eyebrow are just an ugly part of the brutal business he picked. It has been a sobering eight days for British boxers with four losing in world title fights, three by nasty stoppages.

Alvarez was brilliant at times, calm every second and seemed to absorb the very best of Smith's punches with an ease that was harsh to watch; Smith had previously stopped or knocked out 13 of his 23 victims, including his last eight opponents, but in front of Alvarez's horde his punches were not having any visible effect and simply bounced off the Mexican's chin, head and body like a tennis ball hitting a solid wall.

"My timing was not great, it was off and perhaps that is because I've taken a break from sparring," said Smith, who was cut above the right eyebrow last month when sparring with Kell Brook. "I felt a bit slow, but that is not an excuse. I was not getting to him, and losing has nothing to do with me not sparring." It is not often that fallen world champions acknowledge the men that beat them with such heartfelt honesty and without a single bogus caveat attached to their desperate search to understand why they have lost.

Smith made the first six rounds relatively competitive by forcing Alvarez to the ropes, defending well and finding angles for his punches. Alvarez was caught with some good punches but his solid face never betrayed a single sign of tiny concern and in round seven, with the fight slipping away from Smith, a three-punch combination sent the champion tumbling. The combination had started with a low-blow but it was the concussive final shot behind the ear that did the damage; Smith had over ninety seconds to survive when he regained his feet and went in search of his scrambled senses. He heard the bell, but in the eighth a left uppercut landed in the exposed pit of his stomach and after a two-second delay he collapsed. He was bleeding from the two cuts, the blood splattered dramatically all over his face and he had 20 seconds to survive the round.

In the sixty-second break between rounds Joe Gallagher, Smith's trainer, asked him how he was? Smith assured him he was fine, the bell sounded for round nine and out went the Liverpool fighter one final time. It was over after 2:28 of the ninth round, he was on the floor temporarily stricken. the title gone but his reputation enhanced. Smith will not take any solace in the positives.

Canelo could now face Billy-Joe Saunders but remains on course for a showdown with Gennady Golovkin (Getty)

"The Americans want him back," said Gallagher and after a night of private tears there is every chance that Smith will agree to an American return and a fight against one of the other men with a light-middleweight world title. What happened in Texas is likely to stay in Texas and Smith, a young 28, would start another world title fight as a 50-50 shot.

Alvarez could now fight Britain's Billy Joe Saunders, the WBO middleweight champion, before May next year and that would in theory simply be a warm-up for a showdown with Gennady Golovkin, whose cameo in London last weekend when he stopped Brook was as brutal as Alvarez's work against Smith. Golovkin against Alvarez is now the biggest fight in boxing, the type of fight that will not fail, like too many long-delayed showdowns have done, to deliver raw excitement. It will be a spectacular - Brook and Smith can both testify to that.