Canelo Álvarez is a world champion again. The 36-year-old from Guadalajara took the WBC super middleweight title from Christian Mbilli by unanimous decision on Saturday, October 31, 2026 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with the three judges scoring it 115-112, 116-111 and 117-110.
The WBC’s own account of the fight has Mbilli charging early and Álvarez absorbing it behind a tight guard before taking over from the sixth round. A right hand in the seventh had the champion badly hurt, and in the eighth Mbilli lost a point for a punch to the back of the head. Oleksandr Usyk was among those celebrating in Álvarez’s corner afterward.
It was Álvarez’s first fight since Terence Crawford outpointed him in Las Vegas in September 2025, and it hands him back a belt in the division he once ruled outright. Mbilli, the 31-year-old Cameroon-born champion who also holds French and Canadian passports, drops to 29-1-1 in his first defeat as a professional.
How the title ended up on the line
The WBC belt had passed through a strange year. Crawford gave up the super middleweight titles when he retired in December 2025, and on January 27, 2026 the WBC promoted Mbilli from interim to full champion after his ordered fight with Hamzah Sheeraz never happened. Álvarez was announced as Mbilli’s first challenger on April 30. The bout was first set for September 12 at the ANB Arena in Riyadh, then pushed back seven weeks to Halloween night.
Mbilli came in with 24 knockouts in 29 wins and a reputation as a relentless pressure fighter, though his last outing before this one was a split draw with Lester Martínez on the Álvarez-Crawford undercard. Álvarez, listed as a 3-1 favorite in the summer, improves to 64-3-2 with 39 knockouts across 69 fights.
Canelo’s world titles, a Badiyaa timeline
Saturday’s win extends a championship run that began when Álvarez was 20. Here is how the belts stack up by date and division:
- March 5, 2011: beats Matthew Hatton for the vacant WBC light middleweight title, becoming the youngest champion in that division’s WBC history.
- April 2013: adds the WBA and Ring light middleweight titles against Austin Trout.
- November 21, 2015: outpoints Miguel Cotto for the WBC and Ring middleweight titles.
- September 17, 2016: drops back to 154 pounds and stops Liam Smith for the WBO light middleweight belt.
- 2018: beats Gennady Golovkin in their rematch for the WBA (Super) and WBC middleweight titles, then Rocky Fielding for a WBA super middleweight belt.
- 2019: takes the IBF middleweight title from Daniel Jacobs, then knocks out Sergey Kovalev for the WBO light heavyweight crown.
- 2021: becomes the first undisputed super middleweight champion in history after beating Callum Smith, Billy Joe Saunders and Caleb Plant inside 12 months.
- 2025: undisputed at 168 pounds for a second time, before the loss to Crawford.
- October 31, 2026: WBC super middleweight champion again, against Mbilli.
That is world titles in four divisions, from light middleweight to light heavyweight, with unified belts in three of them. Worked out from the dates, the span from his first world title to this one is 15 years and nearly eight months, and his three defeats (Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, Dmitry Bivol in 2022 and Crawford in 2025) amount to one loss in every 23 fights.
What comes next
Before the fight, Edgar Berlanga, who lost to Álvarez on points in September 2024, said in an interview that a win would show Álvarez is “back and he’s gonna try to capture all the titles again, and try to become undisputed,” and pitched himself for a rematch if he can first win a belt of his own. Álvarez has not announced an opponent. The other super middleweight titles sit elsewhere: Sheeraz holds the WBO version, and the Cuban puncher Osleys Iglesias is ranked third behind Álvarez and Mbilli in the ratings that placed Álvarez first at 168 pounds.
For now the record reads: 64 wins, 39 by knockout, and a WBC belt back around the waist of the fighter who first won one on March 5, 2011.
Further reading
Image: Presidencia de la República Mexicana, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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