(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Saul “Canelp” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KO’s) defeated Erislandy Lara (19-2-2, 12 KO’s) by 12 round split decision on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The final judges scores were 115-113, 117-111 for Canelo and 115-113 for Lara.
Canelo reported rehydrated to 171 pounds from the 155 that he weighed in at on Friday.
The judge that scored the fight 117-111 for Canelo appeared to be watching a completely different fight tonight because there’s no way Canelo won the fight by that score. I had Lara winning the fight.
Lara suffered a cut over his left eye in the 7th round. The cut seemed to bother him for several rounds, but by the 10th round, Lara was comfortable again and in full command of the fight in landing his single pot shots Mayweather style.
I lost track of all the times that Canelo missed with his shots. His connect percentage had to be in the 10-15% range, as he was missing shots all night long and unable to hit Lara due to his amazing boxing skills.
You can’t really say the better man won the fight tonight because Lara showed a full command of the ring in dominating the action and making Canelo miss with his Ali like fighting style. It was a pleasure to watch Lara work tonight, because he virtually un-hittable. Canelo landed a lot of low blows in the fight in trying to connect with body shots while Lara was moving around the ring. The referee did little to address the low blows.
Lara said “I have no respect for him. I want a rematch. I’ll do the same and I’ll beat him. I felt like I won the fight 100 percent. I made him look bad in front of his own Mexican fans. I won the fight.”
“You don’t win a fight that way. You don’t run,” Canelo said after the fight. “This wasn’t the fight that I expected. I wanted to give the fans a great fight. He didn’t come to fight, he came to run. He’s a great fighter, I respect him, but he needs to learn to throw more punches.”
Lara appeared to win the first first three rounds. Canelo won the middle rounds, but then Lara came on and dominated the last 3 rounds by nailing Canelo and making him miss.
Canelo wouldn’t commit to which fight he wants next, but obviously it’s not a rematch with Lara. There’s a chance he could fight WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto next May or even fight a rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr. It would seem like the better choice for Canelo would be for him to fight Mayweather again due to the money being better fighting him than it would be for a fight against Cotto.
With Canelo weighing in the 170s tonight, he should be comfortable fighting Cotto at middleweight. After all, Canelo has fought at middleweight his last two fights now with him fighting Alfredo Angulo and now Lara 155 pounds.
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