Erislandy Lara has the shot at beating Golovkin, says DeCubas

By Boxing News - 06/15/2015 - Comments

1-EW5G1460By Allan Fox: Boxing manager Luis DeCubas believes that of all the fighters in the 154 and 160lb divisions, Erislandy Lara is the guy that would have a very good chance of beating WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin if he could get the Kazakhstan fighter to face him.

DeCubas thinks that Lara could do the same thing to Golovkin that Lara did to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in their fight last year in July. Canelo won that fight by a disputed 12 round split decision, but DeCubas felt that Lara had done enough to get the victory due to Canelo landing only eight head shots in the entire fight.

Lara recently called out Golovkin after Lara’s win over old 35-year-old ESPN regular Delvin Rodriguez. Lara said he wants Golovkin, Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather Jr. But unfortunately for Lara, his defeat at the hands of Canelo will make it almost impossible for him to get any of those fighters.

It wasn’t just the fact that Lara lost the fight, but it was the way he lost. He used too much movement, and failed to stay in the pocket long enough to have a chance of winning what was a very winnable fight for him.

You could see that Lara has very high rate skills, and had the kind of talent that would enable him to beat Canelo, but he failed to stop moving long enough for him to win the needed rounds for him to get the victory.

“Of all the fighters, from 154 to 160, I believe that Erislandy Lara is the only one who has the shot against Gennady Golovkin,” DeCubas said to Fightnews.com. “He is very difficult to hit. Lara fought a lot of Russians, fought them at their backyard, has 500 amateur fights and has the WBA title. Pressure doesn’t bother Lara – last time he had 15,000 Mexicans against him when he fought Canelo. Most of the press had him winning the fight. He’ll do the same thing to G that he did to Canelo Alvarez.”

DeCubas went on to say that Lara reminds him of Pernell Whitaker. You can definitely see some of the things in Lara that you could with Whitaker. However, Whitaker dominated during his time, and we haven’t seen that from Lara. He struggled badly against Canelo, Alfredo Angulo and Vanes Martirosyan. There has been too many occasions where Lara hasn’t shined for him to be compared to a prime Whitaker. We still haven’t seen Lara face the other top junior middleweights in the division like Demetrius Andrade and the Charlo brothers. You can’t really say how good Lara is until he fights those guys.

Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffer wants to match Golovkin against Carl Froch, Canelo, Cotto, or the David Lemieux vs. Hassn N’Dam winner. It’s going to be tough for Golovkin to get any of those fights in his next fight. He’s most likely going to be stuck fighting just another regular middleweight contender like Tureano Johnson.

There are not too many worthwhile contenders in the division left for Golovkin to fight, but he’s going to have to fight one of them while he waits for the smoke to clear for the Cotto-Canelo fight.



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