(Photo credit: Tom Casino/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Newly crowned WBA World light middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KO’s) has set former WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez for his next fight after beating former WBA champion Austin Trout (26-2, 14 KO’s) last Saturday night by a 12 round unanimous decision at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Trout didn’t throw enough punches, and this enabled Lara to box his way to a decision by the scores of 118-109, 117-110, 117-110. Trout wishes he could have the fight to do over again, because he would have done things much differently if given a second chance against the Cuban Lara.
Lara said after the fight “I did what Canelo couldn’t do. I dominated Trout and I dropped him. Now we have to make a fight that everyone wants to see which is me against Canelo.”
Lara might not realize that Canelo knocked Trout down too, so he wasn’t the first guy to knock him down. I wouldn’t call what Lara did to Trout last night as a dominating performance. It was more of a safety first type of performance, and it very boring to watch due to the running that Lara did in the fight. With Canelo, he stayed in the pocket much of the time against Trout and was willing to mix it up. What Lara did was move constantly, land single shots, and then get back on his bike. It was very cautious fighting, and he was incredibly economical with his punches.
As much as Lara wants the fight with Canelo, I don’t think he’s going to get it; not now, not ever. Lara showed last night that he’s someone that is purely defensive and not willing to mix it up in anyway. His fighting style had the fans booing the entire fight, and he doesn’t bring in any kind of interest to a fight with Canelo as far as an exciting fighting style. Lara just spoils. But most importantly, Lara lacks the fan base to attract someone like Canelo, so it would be worthless for Canelo to fight him because all the fans would be coming from Canelo’s side and not from Lara’s.
What Golden Boy Promotions and Canelo don’t need is to have an opponent that he’ll literally have to chase all around the ring for 12 rounds, because it doesn’t make good television, it interest fans, and it would make the fight a game of cat and mouse. It’s not worth it.
It’s too bad that Lara blew it last night by failing to fight in an exciting manner, because he may have won the battle, but he probably lost his big chance to ever get a fight against Canelo by fighting so defensively. There’s just no way that Golden Boy or Canelo will agree to fight someone even more defensive than Floyd Mayweather Jr. That would be a crazy move on their part if they would agree to fight Lara, and they obviously won’t. Lara is going to have to be satisfied defending his WBA title against the likes of Alfredo Angulo, Sergey Rabchenko, Ishe Smith, Cornelius Bundrage and Delvin Rodriguez. Lara won’t get Canelo, and he definitely will never get Mayweather to fight him.
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