(Photo credit: Lucas Noonan/Premier Boxing Champions) By Allan Fox: A very thin looking WBA World junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (20-2-2, 12 KOs) made weight on Thursday for his title defense on Friday against #12 WBA Delvin Rodriguez (28-7-4, 16 KOs) at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago, Illinois.
Lara weighed in at 153.6 pounds for the fight, and as I said, he looked very thin to the point where he was weight-drained. Rodriguez weighed in at 153.4 pounds and looked pretty good. Judging by Rodriguez’s appearance, I don’t think he’s going to put a lot of weight on overnight before the fight.
Lara will now have 24 hours to put the weight back on overnight, and likely come into his fight on Friday on Spike TV over 170 pounds. Lara could potentially put on 20 pounds by the time he gets inside the ring for this fight. That not be a big issue in the early part of the fight, but if it goes past the sixth round, Lara could run out of gas and be at the mercy of Rodriguez. However, as bad as Rodriguez has looked lately, he might not be able to make it to the 6th round. He struggled in his last two fights against Joachim Alcine and Miguel Cotto.
Rodriguez and Alcine fought to a 10 round draw last year in April. Before that, Rodriguez was stopped in 3 rounds by Cotto in October 2013.
In the co-feature bout, undefeated light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev (8-0, 8 KOs) weighed in at 175 pounds for his 12 round bout against American Alexander Johnson (16-2, 7 KOs). Beterbiev looked in great shape and ready for the fight.
The 33-Johnson weighed in at 174.2 pounds. He also looked in excellent shape. However, he’s so over-matched in this fight that it really doesn’t matter what kind of shape Johnson is in. He’s still likely to be knocked out early on Friday unless he shows some talent that he’s never exhibited before in any of his fights. Johnson is just a body for Beterbiev to keep him busy until he can get a world title shot. Johnson wasn’t meant to be someone who would give Beterbiev any real troubles. He doesn’t have enough talent for him to give him a real contest.
Here are the official weighs for the Lara-Rodriguez card
Erislandy Lara 153.6 vs. Delvin Rodriguez 153.4
Artur Beterbiev 175 vs. Alexander Johnson 174.2
Artur Szpilka 231 vs. Manuel Quezada 233.5
Eleider Alvarez 181 vs. Anatoliy Dudchenko 180.4
Comments are closed.