Weights: Charlo, Trout, Jackson, Lara & Martirosyan

By Boxing News - 05/20/2016 - Comments

1-weigh in-0014 - Erislandy Lara and Vanes Martirosyan

By Tim Fletcher: At Friday’s weigh-in, WBA World junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (22-2-2, 13 KOs) made weight at 153.5lbs for his title defense on Saturday night against Vanes Martirosyan (36-2-1, at The Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas, Nevada. Martirosyan weighed in at 153.75lbs. The The fight card will be televised on Showtime Championship Boxing.

Lara and Martirosyan fought to a 9th round technical draw four years ago in 2012. Since then, Lara has done a little better than Martirosyan in winning five of his six fights. However, Lara lost his most important fight during that time frame in losing to Saul “Canelo” Alvsarez by a 12 round split decision in 2014. Lara has since won his last three fights over Ishe Smith, Delvin Rodriguez and Jan Zaveck. Those are not big names, and some boxing fans believe that Lara has been milking his WBA title on purpose against weak opposition for easy paydays rather than taking the risky fights. However, the way that Lara performed against Canelo, by running constantly, might have hurt his chances of getting the bigger names to fight him because the popular fighters don’t typically like to fight runners.

Lara needs to change his fighting style if he wants to get the bigger names to fight him. it might be too lte for hm to undo the perceptions that different fighters have of him.

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The idea behind a rematch between Lara and Martirosyan is a good one, but the fight is four years too late. Lara’s career is floundering right now due to the lack of quality opposition he’s been facing, and Martirosyan’s career is in worse shape with him now just a fringe contender about to drop out of the top 15. Martirosyan has spent too many years fighting weaker opposition and failing to get out of the beginning stages of his career. When Martirosyan has stepped it up against better opposition, he’s lost or in the case of the Lara fight, been held to a draw.

IBF junior middleweight champion Jermall Charlo (23-0, 18 KOs) weighed in at 153lbs for his title defense against former WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (30-2, 17 kOs). For his part, Trout weighed in slightly heavier at 154lbs. This fight figures to be the most interesting of the three televised cards on Showtime. This figures to be a very tough fight for Trout because he’s facing what is arguably the hardest puncher on the card in Jermall. The southpaw Trout had had problems in facing punchers in the last three years, and in this fight he’s going to be facing a champion that has both the size and the power to hurt him. he 5’9 1/2″ Trout is usually the bigger guy in the ring, but he’s going to be out-sized against the 6’0″ Charlo. The 30-year-old Trout is slower, weaker, smaller and older than the 26-year-old Charlo. On paper, Trout loses this fight and perhaps badly if Charlo is able to put hands on him.

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Unbeaten Jermell Charlo (27-0, 12 KOs) weighed in at 153.25lbs for his fight against John Jackson (20-2, 15 KOs)for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title. Jackson came in at 153.5lbs. Charlo upset Jackson this week when he said he would not only beat him, but also beat his father Julian Jackson if the two of them had fought at the same time. Julian Jackson (55-6, 49 KOs) is a former two division world champion, who was known for his incredible one-punch power during his career. John Jackson thought it was unnecessary for Jermell to make comments about his father Julian during the run up to the fight, and he says he wants to make him pay in the ring. While it would be interesting to know who would win in a fight between guys from different eras like Jermell Charlo and Julian Jackson, all we can do is speculate. Based on the huge power than Jackson possessed during his career and the lack of power from Jermell, you would have to heavily favor Julian if the two of them had faced each other. Julian was a devastating puncher. If you didn’t have the power to trouble him, he would get you out of there and quick. You can argue that Terry Norris, a fighter that Jackson stopped in two rounds, would have beaten Jermell if the two of them fought in the same era.

The promoter for the event is Mayweather Promotions.

Here are the official weights for the card:

Erislandy Lara 153.5 vs. Vanes Martirosyan 153.75

Jermall Charlo 153 vs. Austin Trout 154

Jermell Charlo 153.25 vs. John Jackson 153.5