By Dan Ambrose: WBA junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (22-2-2, 13 KOs) called out both Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last night following his 12 round unanimous decision victory over Vanes “The Nightmare” Martirosyan (36-2-1, 21 KOs) at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
Lara, 33, lost to Canelo in 2014 by a disputed 12 round split decision, and he’s been calling for a rematch with him ever since. Lara has yet to fight IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Golovkin, but he’s willing to go up to 160 to fight him.
Golovkin hasn’t publically mentioned Lara’s name as someone he’d be interested in fighting. Maybe that’ll change now that Lara has beaten #15 WBA Martirosyan in a rematch. I think Lara is working with the wrong side of the boxing rankings for him to be calling out the likes of Canelo and Golovkin.
To call out those names, Lara should be fighting the #1 to #5 ranked contenders at the minimum instead of guys ranked at #15 like Martirosyan. Lara’s other recent wins have come against 40-year-old Jan Zaveck, 36-year-old Delvin Rodriguez and 37-year-old Ishe Smith. It looks like Lara is fighting mostly old guys now and/or bottom feeder type contenders like Martirosyan. It seems like Lara is going about trying to get fights against Canelo and Golovkin the wrong way.
“I would like to fight Canelo,” Lara said after the fight. Lara also said he wants a fight against Golovkin as well.
Lara looked good enough last night against Martirosyan to cause the 25-year-old Canelo problems in a rematch if he could lure him back into the ring. However, Lara’s fighting style was safety first last night, and there were a lot of boos from the lack of action in the fight. We don’t know what the ratings were for the Lara-Martirosyan fight on Showtime Championship Boxing, but I would guess they weren’t high. Canelo fights on HBO now, whereas Lara is fighting on Showtime.
Golovkin also fights on HBO. That would seem to be the deal killer for a potential fight between Lara and either of those guys. It’s doubtful that the two cable networks would work together for a fight between Lara and Golovkin or Canelo like they did with the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao. There’s just not a lot of interest in the boxing world in fights involving Lara and Canelo or Golovkin.
Lara needs to build up his name by fighting top contenders rather than old timers like Delvin Rodriguez, Zaveck, Ishe Smith and bottom feeders like Martirosyan. I’m not sure what the problem is for Lara and his promoters with the way he’s being matched nowadays. They’re doing a fine job of keeping Lara as the WBA champion with the match-making they’re doing, but they’re also keeping him from becoming a big name by putting him in with lesser names.
For Lara to get the bigger fights, he needs to take on the dangerous contenders or champions. Since I don’t see that ever happening, he might as well not even mention Canelo or Golovkin, because those fights aren’t realistic. They would if Lara cleaned out the 154lb division by beating both Charlo brothers, Liam Smith, Demetrius Andrade, and then defeated some of the top middleweights like Daniel Jacobs, Billy Joe Saunders and Andy Lee. However, I doubt that we’ll ever see Lara fight any of those fighters.
I can’t see it happening. He’s probably not going to do what he needs to do for him to get the Golovkin or Canelo fights, so he’s stuck where he’s at fighting and milking his WBA 154lb title against weak opposition. Lara should be happy that Showtime is bothering to televise his fights because it’s been two years since he fought a fight that was competitive on paper.
The last time Lara fought someone that had a chance of beating him going into the fight was his match against Canelo in 2014, and he lost that fight by not throwing enough punches and doing too much running. Since that fight, Lara has milked his WBA title against Ishe Smith, Delvin Rodriguez and Jan Zaveck.
If Lara wants the big fights, he needs to move up to middleweight while he still has some of his youth left and try to work himself to the No.1 position in the rankings with the IBF, WBA and WBC. He could then get a title shot against Golovkin.