By Chris Williams: Former WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (26-1, 14 KO’s) says he’ll be moving up to the 160 lb. division in the near future to campaign as a middleweight as soon as he finishes up some of his personal goals at 154 that he has set for himself. Trout, 28, has a scheduled fight against Cuban Erislandy Lara (18-1-2, 12 KO’s) on December 7th in a fight for the vacant WBA 154 lb. title at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York, USA.

Trout also wants to see if he can get a rematch against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who beat Trout by a very close 12 round unanimous decision last April in San Antonio, Texas. Trout would like to get a chance to avenge that defeat, but he prefers that the fight be staged in Las Vegas, Nevada instead of Texas like last time.

He’d also like to face Floyd Mayweather Jr. if possible. That’s a fight that likely won’t happen because Mayweather wants to focus on maximizing the amount of money he makes in his remaining four fights on his Showtime/CBS contract, and there’s probably not a lot of fan interest in a Mayweather-Trout fight unless Trout is able to beat Lara and then defeat Canelo in a rematch.

That’s about the only way that Trout will be able to get a big money fight against Mayweather. But that’s probably not realistic because Golden Boy Promotions won’t likely take the chance of putting Canelo back in with Trout anytime soon given how close their fight was. That would be a dangerous fight for Canelo because the blueprint has now been created in how to beat him by Mayweather, and Canelo-Trout rematch wouldn’t likely have the open scoring like their previous fight did.

Trout at middleweight could find himself in some interesting bouts against the likes of Gennady Golovkin, Daniel Geale, Darren Barker, Sergio Martinez and Peter Quillin. Trout would match-up against those guys as far as the skills go, but the power might be a problem for Trout. He didn’t have the same kind of power that Canelo had, and he was bothered by his hard punches in their fight.

The middleweights are every bit as strong as Canelo, and some cases they’re even more power in the case of Golovkin. For Trout to have any chance of beating those fighters, he’d have to either improve his power substantially or his defense to keep from getting hit.

At 28, it’s doubtful that Trout will develop any more power than he has now, so he’s going to be at a disadvantage against the middleweights. Trout is capable of adapting his defensive skills to make up for his lack of power, but it would still put him in a difficult place to be facing big punchers like Golovkin without the weaponry to compete in the way that he would need to in order to have a decent chance for success. Trout might find that he’s better off moving back down to junior middleweight to find more success in that class despite the lack of top names.

If Trout can’t get past Lara on December 7th, then there will be no point in him moving up to 160.