Triple G stalked away from the ring in the T-Mobile Arena without addressing the jubilant Mexican majority in the sell-out crowd, clearly believing he had been robbed again.
Although this rematch which was seethingly bitter in its build up it truly was close enough for him to embrace the younger man who had taken his crown.
That is how champions behave. Canelo, having withstood the hammer blows from the heaviest pound-for-pound puncher in the world was generous, also.
He applied his tourniquet to the bad blood which had flown down the Vegas Strip by hailing Golovkin as ‘a great fighter.’
The valiant pair of them had given their all in a battle which became rousing the longer it went. Without quite touching the heights of an all-time classic, - with the legendary Tommy Hearns watching on as his successors went the punishing distance, this was thriller in its own right.
Perhaps Golovkin did pay the price once more for fighting in Canelo’s virtual home town. I had him winning 116-113. But some of the rounds were close and the prize only fell to Alvarez by dint of the scoring of the last round. Two of the judges gave the 12th to Canelo and that score prevented another draw, albeit a less contentious one this time.
So we ended up with two official cards of 115-113 with the third equal.
Fair enough, perhaps, given the closeness of some rounds but Golovkin’s immediate angst was understandable. He did the right thing later when he said: 'I thought I did enough to win but I'm not complaining. Canelo fought a great fight and this why we have the judges. And the new judges were good judges.’
A champion to the bloodied end of his first defeat and his record hold on the WBA, WBC and IBO world middleweight belts.
Unfortunately for Britain’s WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders the decision does little to improve his prospects of a unification super-fight.
Canelo is likely to go on to a mandatory defence against David Lemieux, the Canadian who Saunders outclassed recently but who regained his place as No 1 challenger by flattening Ireland’s Spike O’Sullivan inside a round earlier in the night.