Willie Monroe Jr. defeats Gabriel Rosado; is Canelo Alvarez next?

— -- ARLINGTON, Texas -- In an audition for a possible Dec. 10 fight against Canelo Alvarez, middleweight Willie Monroe Jr. may have beaten Gabriel Rosado, but he did little to enhance his chances of landing the coveted money fight in a lackluster decision win on the Alvarez-Liam Smith undercard Saturday night at AT&T Stadium.

Rosado and Monroe, who were both knocked out by Gennady Golovkin in world-title fights, were both under consideration to challenge British world titleholder Billy Joe Saunders in the co-feature, but when he rejected fighting both of them, as well as Curtis Stevens, Golden Boy Promotions matched Rosado and Monroe.

The judges scored it 118-110, 117-111 and 116-112 in a fight that featured little clean punching and elicited booing from the crowd throughout.

Monroe's movement and quick jab seemed to throw the hard-charging Rosado off, keeping him from landing too many clean shots. Neither man landed many clean punches in a boring cat-and-mouse fight that saw an aggressive, stalking Rosado (23-10, 13 KOs), 30, of Philadelphia, going straight ahead, as usual, and Monroe (21-2, 6 KOs), a 29-year-old southpaw from Rochester, New York, boxing, moving and countering.

Rosado, in his third fight with trainer and former world titleholder Fernando Vargas, landed a left hook that dropped Monroe to his backside at the end of the ninth round, but referee Laurence Cole ruled that the blow apparently was after the bell and did not call a knockdown.

It was one exciting moment in a otherwise forgettable fight in which neither fighter turned in the kind of performance that would excite anyone about a fight with Alvarez.

Diaz stops bloody Cancio