(Photo credit: Tom Casino/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Austin Trout (26-1, 14 KO’s) will be going after his old title tonight against Erislandy Lara (18-1-2, 12 KO’s) in their fight for the vacant WBA 154 lb. tittle at the Barclays Center in Brookly, New York. Trout lost the belt in a 12 round defeat at the hands of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last April in a fight that many people felt was a toss up.
Even Floyd Mayweather Jr. felt that the only thing that kept Trout from winning the fight was a knockdown in the 7th. Trout fought a good fight, but was an unlucky with the open scoring and the venue of the fight taking place in San Antonio, Texas, where the crowd was predominately fans of the red-haired Canelo.
Trout will be facing a lot of speed from Lara tonight, and it’s going to be a real test for him to see whether he can negate Lara’s hand speed and avoid his pot shots. Lara will have the speed and power advantage in this fight, but he’ll be giving away a lot in the size department. In looking at Lara’s body when standing with Trout, he does not look confident at all, and that could mean that Trout has gotten the better of him mentally in their meetings outside of the ring. Trout will no doubt be trying to carry that into the ring to use it to out-box Lara, and take the vacant junior middleweight title.
The winner of this fight tonight could find himself facing Canelo in a pay-per-view fight in 2014. That’s potentially a big deal because Canelo is likely going to be one of the big PPV stars moving forward, as long as he doesn’t keep getting beaten. Trout wants nothing better to get a rematch with Canelo, but without open scoring and with the fight taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada rather than Texas.
Lara did not look good in his last fight against Alfredo Angulo, and he failed to impress against Carlos Molina. He lacks stamina, and he seems to go to sleep during parts of fights. Angulo also exposed a weakness in Lara in taking body shots. Trout will likely try and exploit that tonight by going to Lara’s body to see if he can put him on the floor and keep him there.
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