By Eric Baldwin: WBA World junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (23-2-2, 13 KOs) wants to get the big names like Gennady Golovkin and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to fight him. However, Lara isn’t making himself a bigger name to get those fights by remaining in the 154lb division and spending time fighting guys that are no longer relevant as top five contenders like Jan Zaveck, Vanes Martirosyan, Ishe Smith and Delvin Rodriguez.
The 33-year-old Lara just finished chewing up a year and a half of his career fighting those four fighters. Lara lost to Canelo by a 12 round decision in July 2014. A rematch between them is probably not going to happen with Lara fighting the type of opposition he’s been facing.
For Lara to get a rematch against Canelo, he’ll need to move up to middleweight and knock off the big names in that division. Lara reportedly won’t fight the Charlo brothers in the 154lb division. When you remove the Charlo brothers from the equation, it leaves no one popular enough for Lara to fight in the 154lb division. Miguel Cotto won’t likely ever fight Lara because he’s not a big name.
Lara says he wants to fight Golovkin, but he’s going about getting the fight with him in the wrong way. Since Lara has no one good to fight against in the junior middleweight division, he needs to move up in weight to the middleweight division and look to knock off the following names: Tureano Johnson, Chris Eubank Jr., Billy Joe Saunders, David Lemieux, Jorge Sebastian Heiland, Arif Magomedov, Michel Soro, Ryota Murata, Hassan N’Dam, Peter Quillin, Andy Lee, Curtis Stevens, and Daniel Geale. There’s no question that Lara could beat some of them.
“I’m ready to fight anybody between welterweight and middleweight,” said Lara recently. “My first choice is to fight GGG because I feel he’s the toughest opponent and would be a fight that would solidify my legacy. My next choice would be to have a rematch with Canelo because we all know there’s unfinished business with lots of controversy. If either fight can’t be made, then my focus will be to put my name in the record books and defend my titles 12 times to break the record and unify them all at the same time.”
If Lara remains where he’s at in the junior middleweight division, defending his WBA 154lb title against old timers and/or no longer relevant fighters, the way he’s been doing, I think that’s all Lara will do for the remainder of his time as a top fighter. I don’t think he’ll ever get another huge fight like the one he got against Canelo.
Lara’s fighting style is too defensive, his popularity not high enough, and his resume lacking in big name fighters.
For Lara to move up in weight to 160, he would be taking a big risk in doing so. But if you want to accomplish things in your career, you have to be willing to take risks. If you get complacent the way we’re seeing with Lara in the last year and a half of his career, then you’ll wind up just treading water.
I think Showtime will still televise Lara’s fights on their network even if he’s not a world champion at middleweight. They’ll obviously want to see Lara making progress towards winning a world title at that weight. It won’t do them any good if Lara moves up to 160 and continues to fight guys like Zaveck, Ishe Smith, Delvin Rodriguez and Martirosyan over and over again. Lara needs to take some real risks by fighting opposition that actually has a chance of beating him rather than facing guys in sure thing fights.