By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya, the president of Golden Boy Promotions, is in a position where his fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (43-1-2, 31 KO’s) absolutely cannot afford to lose his fight next Saturday night against Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KO’s), because Canelo has already been badly exposed by Floyd Mayweather Jr from his loss last year, and Canelo’s life and death struggle to defeat Austin Trout a year ago further took a huge chunk out of Canelo’s status as the future of boxing.
De La Hoya thinks that Lara wants to defeat Canelo in order to earn glory from having beaten a super talented fighter, but Lara is more of just wanting to put the 23-year-old Canelo in his place and prove to boxing fans that he was always nothing more than a manufactured hype job. He wants to expose Canelo, and pluck Golden Boy’s golden goose clean in front of what should be a decent paying audience on July 12th on Showtime pay-per-view from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“Lara wants the glory from beating Canelo,” De La Hoya said. “This isn’t the type of fight where the fighters will come out and feel each other out in the first couple of rounds. No, right when the bell rings, you’re going to see a clash of honor and glory.”
To be honest, a lot of the glory that would have come from Lara beating Canelo already went out the window after Floyd Mayweather Jr to the flat-footed Canelo and beat him first. Now it’s not so much a glory thing for Lara, but more of a taking care of business to cement himself in as the top guy at 154.
De La Hoya seems to be going a little bit overboard in seeing what Lara is feeling about the fight, and how the fight will play out. Lara isn’t picturing this as an honor and glory thing. He said it himself that it’s about feeding his children and exposing Canelo as hype. Lara wants to start in where Floyd Mayweather Jr left off by giving the 23-year-old Canelo a good schooling for 12 rounds in knocking him off of his perch.
De La Hoya has been saying that he hopes that Lara will fight Canelo the say way he fought Alfredo Angulo last year by going toe-to-toe with him, but obviously Lara isn’t going to do that. With him fighting a guy that will likely come into the fight near 180 pounds for their catch-weight fight at 155, Lara isn’t going to play into Canelo’s hands just because De La Hoya wants him to.
Obviously De La Hoya sees that as Canelo’s best chance of winning the fight if Lara comes out slugging and staying in the pocket the way he did against Angulo, but he’s not likely going to fight Canelo the same way because he’s bigger, faster and stronger than Angulo. So he’s not going to be giving Canelo a handicap the same way that he gave Angulo, because it’s too risky of a fight for him to do that.
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