(Photo credit: Lucas Noonan/Premier Boxing Champions) By Allan Fox: With WBA junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (21-2-2, 12 KOs) calling out WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) for a fight, this could give Golovkin an interesting fight for August or possibly September if Lara’s adviser Al Haymon will allow the 32-year-old Lara to take the fight. Ever since Lara’s loss to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last year, Lara has been very vocal about wanting a big fight.
Recently, Lara has started calling out Golovkin for a big fight. It might not be the huge fight that Golovkin is looking for, but it would still give him the chance to show the difference between himself and Canelo, who struggled badly to beat Lara last year in July.
Lara is well-known with the hardcore boxing fans in the United States, and it would give Golovkin potentially a good scalp to add to his collection. It would certainly be a lot better than some of the fighters that Golovkin has recently beaten like Willie Monroe Jr., Daniel Geale, Martin Murray, Marco Antonio Rubio and Osumanu Adama.
“I’m going to sit down with my team and Al (Haymon),” Lara said last Friday night after his 12 round unanimous decision win over Delvin Rodriguez. “We want the best. We want Floyd Mayweather. We want Miguel Cotto. We want Gennady Golovkin at 160 lbs.”
It would be a good move for Lara to move up to middleweight to take the fight with Golovkin, because Lara has been having to drain down from the low 170s to fight at 154 in the junior middleweight division. It’s pretty obvious at this point that Lara is a real middleweight in disguise in fighting in the junior middleweight division. By moving up to middleweight, Lara will likely have more punching power because he won’t have to drain down six extra pounds every time to fight at 154.
Besides that, it’s not as if there is anyone at junior middleweight that Lara can fight for a big payday. He already fought Canelo, and his promoter Oscar De La Hoya already made it clear that he won’t be fighting him in the near future. Floyd Mayweather Jr. definitely will never fight Lara, and the same with Miguel Cotto. But a guy like Golovkin is a real possibility because he would take the fight. If Lara moves up in weight, he would be in the position to fight guys like Daniel Jacobs, Andy Lee, and Peter Quillin and of course Golovkin.
Golovkin would be a real tough out for Lara because he’s got that huge punching power. Alfredo Angulo put Lara down twice in their fight in 2013. Lara seems to be susceptible to body shots. That’s an area that Golovkin could definitely exploit.
Unless Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler has someone in mind already for his next fight, he should call Lara’s bluff and agree to fight him. If nothing else, it would at least give boxing fans a chance to see if Lara was serious or not in calling Golovkin out. If he’s not, then the fans will at least know. If Lara is serious, then Golovkin will have an opponent with a name and a difficult style for him to solve.
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