(Picture credit: Hogan Photos) By Dan Ambrose: WBA junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KO’s) sees challenger Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (43-1-1, 31 KO’s) as being fragile mentally to the point where he needs to make up whoppers in order to boosts his own shaky self-confidence. Canelo already was beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr last September, and he stands to lose a fortune if he gets beaten by Lara in their fight on July 12th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
A loss for the red-haired Canelo in this fight will remove all possibility of him fighting for a world title next May against WBC middleweight champion in what would be a huge pay-per-view fight that could approach the PPV numbers that Canelo’s fight against Mayweather pulled in. But in this case, Canelo would be receiving a much bigger cut of the financial pie because the purse split between him and Cotto would likely be closer to 50-50 than the split that he received for the Mayweather fight.
So in other words, if Canelo loses to Lara, he can forget about the big money he could potentially make in a title shot against Cotto next May, unless Cotto’s promoter Bob Arum wants to match the beaten Canelo against Cotto. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised at all if that’s the case, as sad as it would be.
In response to Canelo talking about how he felt that Lara was afraid of him when he met with him after his loss to Mayweather, Lara said, “He’s talking nonsense. He knows I’m not scared of anyone so he’s trying to pump himself up to make him believe that I’m scared of him. The fact is he’s a very insecure fighter who knows he’s going to lose. For him to say these things is a bad sign for him. He’s lost and confused. I’m going to take him to Cuban school.”
Lara also was bothered by how Canelo decided that he wouldn’t fight at the 154 pound weight for their July 12th fight. Instead this bout will take place at a catch-weight of 155 pounds. Lara sees that as laziness on Canelo’s part, and a sign that he hasn’t come to terms with him not being able to make weight to fight in the junior middleweight division any longer. This will be the second consecutive fight where Canelo won’t be fighting in the junior middleweight division. To Lara, that’s a sign that he should be fighting at middleweight instead of hanging around and dragging junior middleweights up to middleweight to fight them.
Comments are closed.