By Dan Ambrose: Erislandy Lara (19-2-2, 12 KO’s) isn’t too happy today after losing to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KO’s) by a 12 round split decision last night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Lara made Canelo look bad for much of the fight with his punch and move technique made popular by Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Lara said after the fight “I think it was disgraceful the way they did me. I want a rematch. He [Canelo] knows he lost in his heart.”
Canelo doesn’t agree that Lara won the fight, and he’s not talking rematch either. Canelo thinks that Lara ran from him all night long, and he feels that’s not the way that someone should fight. But of course, Canelo also thought that Mayweather Jr ran from him last September in his loss to him, so it’s not surprising to hear Canelo failing to admit that he struggled again against a fighter with speed and defensive skills better than his own.
“I didn’t think it was going to be that kind of a marathon,” Canelo said. “I think I threw the harder combinations. I took the fight because you guys said I wouldn’t take it, but I did. I think I won the fight. I came to him. I made the whole fight and that’s how you win a fight. If you want to win fights, you have to throw punches. You’re never going to see someone win without throwing punches. It’s a contact sport.”
Canelo missed a lot of punches, and looked clumsy, uncoordinated and slow at times. Let’s not get confused at all about this. Canelo did not look good last night. You can say he won, but you cannot say he looked good. Canelo was slow, hittable, plodding middleweight last night. You can’t call him a junior middleweight because he drained down to 155 to make weight for the fight and then rehydrated to 171. That’s not a junior middleweight. He was a light heavyweight last night, and a slow one at that.
If Canelo is going to brag about how he took the fight to Lara, and landed more punches, then he’s kidding himself because he looked slow and very average last night. He did not look like a high quality fighter. He just looked a light heavyweight in the ring against a guy that weighed less than him.
Lara has one thing going for him right now, and that’s the fact that he’s still the WBA World junior middleweight champion. Canelo didn’t want to fight for Lara’s WBA belt, so it wasn’t up for grabs in their middleweight fight at 155 pounds.
The fight took place in the middleweight division instead of at junior middleweight. Lara can now move on and start making title defenses for his WBA belt against the likes of Joshua Clottey, Jack Culcay, Sergey Rabchenko, Artem Karpets, Austin Trout, Zaurbek Baysangurov, Kanat Islam, Ishe Smith, David Zegarra, Dennis Hogan and Anthony Mundine. With those guys as the top contenders that the WBA has ranked, it’s very likely that Lara will hold onto his WBA junior middleweight title for many years to come unless someone like Miguel Cotto, Mayweather or Canelo wants to challenge him for the belt.
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