Lara confronts Canelo at post-fight press conference, and is brushed off

By Boxing News - 03/09/2014 - Comments

canelo74By Chris Williams: WBA interim junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara got up on stage last night at the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez – Alfredo Angulo post-fight press conference, and called Canelo out out in front of a large audience of media members. Instead of Canelo giving Lara hope for a future fight now that he’s had his easy tune-up fight against Angulo, Canelo told Lara that he has to wait for a fight a fight. Before saying that, Canelo questioned what fans are interested in seeing him fight Lara.

Here’s how the conversation played out:

Lara to Canelo: “Everyone wants to see us fight. When can we fight?”

Canelo: “Nearly everyone wants to see it? Who wants to see it?” Canelo then points to someone in the crowd and says “Isn’t that your manager? This isn’t how you make fights, so you have to wait.”

In fairness to Lara, I think Canelo would have been embarrassed if he had asked the media members directly if they were interested in seeing him fight Lara, because media and fans alike are very interested in seeing him face the Cuban star. For Canelo to act like only one person in the entire room was interested in seeing him fight Lara made Caelo look disingenuous.

It’s pretty clear that boxing fans would like to see Canelo fight a good opponent like Lara after watching him face a bad opponent in Angulo. But it’s also pretty clear that Lara has a fighting style that is too similar to Floyd Mayweather Jr., and Golden Boy Promotions likely don’t want Canelo in with anyone even remotedly similar to him. Golden Boy is trying to build Canelo back up to make him look good, hence a slow fighter like Angulo was selected for him. Lara is too slick and too skilled for Canelo, and I think he’d not desirable for them.

It was awkward how Lara came on stage at the press conference to confront Canelo. Someone should have told Lara that he was wasting his time in trying to get a fight against Canelo, because if he – and his promoters at Golden Boy – wanted to fight Lara, they would have done it a long time ago. The fact that they chose to fight welterweight Matthew Hatton for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title instead of Lara, suggests that he was probably seen as too dangerous for Canelo. If the desire to fight Lara was there then Canelo would have fought him in the last three years instead of fighting the likes of Hatton, Alfonso Gomez, Kermit Cintron, Ryan Rhodes, Shane Mosley and Austin Trout.



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