Despite Montiel’s late push, Charlo dominated in a 118-109, 119-109, 120-108 victory at the Toyota Center to remain undefeated and retain his belt in the 160-pound division.
From the beginning, Montiel exuded confidence.
Yet, the challenger wouldn’t go down and instead opted to trade punches at times and looked to sneak in a power left hook between Charlo’s offensive barrage.
Even in the final round, with a victory on the scorecards well out of range, the Mexican still looked to land the big punch to pull off the miracle upset.
In his postfight interview, Charlo stumped for the winner of December’s bout between Gennadiy Golovkin and Ryota Murata for the WBA and IBF belts.