Canelo-Lara to fight to take place at 155lb

By Boxing News - 04/14/2014 - Comments

canelo677By Dan Ambrose: As I expected, the July 12th fight between WBA junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez won’t have Lara’s WBA 154lb title on the line for the fight, because Canelo doesn’t want to fight for it. So instead of this being a junior middleweight fight, it’s going to take place in the middleweight division at 155lbs.

The middleweight division weight limit is from 155-160lbs. By having it beyond the 154lb limit, it’ll make it a little – but not a lot – easier for the red-headed Canelo to make weight for the fight. In his last fight against Alfredo Angulo last March, Canelo had the weight increased to 155 after he started having problems getting down to the 154lb limit. Canelo ended up rehydrating 20lbs to 175lbs after making weight.

“The weight is 155 max, which we have no problem with,” said Lara’s co-manager Luis DeCubas Jr. to ESPN. “It doesn’t matter. We got the fight we wanted. We’re good to go. We got a deal in place. It’s a fight Lara has wanted. He’s been after it for a few years.”

Canelo seems to be getting his feet wet in the middleweight division by tip-toeing into the division by small increments instead of moving up all at once. What does seem a little off-putting, though, is that Canelo is fighting junior middleweights in the middleweight division instead of him facing legit middleweights.

We saw Canelo doing something similar to this when he moved up to the junior middleweight division from the welterweight division. For a long period of time, Canelo was still fighting welterweights instead of the top junior middleweights.

It’s only now where he’s sort of fighting junior middleweights. Canelo’s last fight was against welterweight Floyd Mayweather Jr., who beat him pretty easily. Canelo is hoping to use the Lara fight as a warm-up to get him ready to face the winner of the Miguel Cotto vs. Sergio Martinez fight in the middleweight division. Those two fighters are facing each other on June 7th at Madison Square Garden. It’s probably not realistic that Canelo will get a fight against Sergio if he beats Cotto, due to Sergio fighting on HBO and Canelo on Showtime.

That’s why Canelo is likely hoping that Cotto beats Sergio, because that would put him into position for him to get a fight against him later this year, if Canelo gets past Lara on July 12th.

A loss for Canelo against Lara will mess up his plans in a big way to get a fight against Cotto or a rematch with Mayweather. Canelo would have to go back into the rebuilding stage of his career by fighting someone like Alfredo Angulo again, and hope that he can quickly work his way back into the bigger fights.

Depending on how badly Lara beats him, Canelo might be wise to try his luck with a rematch to see if he can somehow get a decision against him. If he were to take the fight to San Antonio, Texas, he might get lucky like he did when he was given a decision over Austin Trout over there last year.



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