Lara: I’m going to give Canelo a beat down like Trinidad did to De La Hoya

By Boxing News - 06/28/2014 - Comments

lara84By Dan Ambrose: WBA junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KO’s) says that he wants to give his opponent Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (43-1-1, 31 KO’s) a beating similar to the one that boxing great Felix Trinidad gave to a then prime Oscar De La Hoya in their fight in September of 1999.

De La Hoya fought well for the first 6 rounds, and then took his foot off the accelerator in the second half of the fight. This enabled Trinidad to come back and give him a minor beating en route to winning a 12 round majority decision.

You can’t really call Canelo a challenger for the Lara fight because Canelo insisted that the fight take place at middleweight at a catch-weight of 155 pounds, so Lara’s WBA junior middleweight title won’t be on the line when the two of them fight on July 12th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“I told Canelo I’m going to give you a beat down like Tito Trinidad gave to Oscar De La Hoya,” Lara said to HBO. “The only message I can send to Canelo is to prepare yourself. Prepare well, because I’m coming after him.”

Lara sees the 23-year-old Canelo as a phony ducker, who only agreed to finally face him because he shamed him into it by coming up on stage at the post-fight press conference after his recent win over Alfredo Angulo and asked him in front of a large room full of reporters to fight him next. Lara thinks that episode, along with his shaming of him on Twitter, led to Canelo being forced into the fight in order to keep the respect of the fans.
“Fighters know the danger I pose in the ring. I’ve a smart and challenging boxer,” Lara said.

Lara came up to Canelo on the stage after his win over a strangely weak Angulo and said “In front of everyone here, who I’m sure want to watch the fight, I just want to know when you’re going to do it.”

Canelo then asked the media, “Are you guys dying to watch it? Yes?”

Canelo stewed on the incident and clearly bothered by the way that Lara shamed him in front of the media. He said “The press conference where Lara got up on stage that definitely bothered me. I’m not one of those fighters to do that type of thing. Him talking so much was the straw that broke the camel’s back. That’s why we’re fighting now.”

What Canelo isn’t saying is that Lara was being ignored while Canelo fought lesser quality fighters for most of the last 3 years. If you subtract Canelo’s fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr, all you’re left with is fighters that are well below Lara’s talent level. There’s no way for Canelo to justify him fighting the likes of Matthew Hatton, Alfonso Gomez, Shane Mosley, Kermit Cintron, Ryan Rhodes, Josesito Lopez and Austin Trout, but then not fighting Lara. Those guys were all easy opponents for Canelo, and it’s understandable why Lara would feel like he had to go beyond the norm to try and get a fight against Canelo. If he had stayed silent and merely waited, Canelo might not have chosen to ever fight him of if he did, Lara would be in his mid-30s by the time the fight took place and no longer in his prime.



Comments are closed.