By Dan Ambrose: Showtime will be televising the replay of last Saturday’s controversial bout between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs) and Erislandy Lara (19-2-2, 12 KO’s) at 9 p.m ET/PT. This was a fight that the 24-year-old Canelo won by a 12 round split decision by the scores 115-113 and 117-111 for Canelo, and 115-113 for Lara.
Many people in the boxing industry feel that Lara did enough to get the win, but the more popular Canelo ended up getting the nod.
After the replay of the Canelo vs. Lara fight, Showtime will be televising Canelo vs. Lara ALL ACCESS epilogue. It’s going to be a night of Canelo and Lara on Showtime for fans who didn’t purchase their fight on Showtime pay-per-view last Saturday, and for fans who want to see the rematch.
ESPN commentator Teddy Atlas revealed last night that he had Lara winning the fight, but that he wasn’t surprised that he lost the fight. He didn’t agree with the 117-111 score given to Canelo by the New Mexico judge.
Atlas said “I picked Canelo to win, but I thought Lara won. I thought Floyd Mayweather showed the blueprint in how to beat Canelo; just change range, change the distance, you show angles, you work the outside, you keep him off balance, especially for the early part. For a lot of the fight, Lara followed the blueprint, he followed it very well. He pot-shotted, he exposed Canelo in a way that Mayweather exposed Canelo. But then things changed a little bit. But then Canelo started getting inside and going to the body, not chasing the head which was elusive; going to where he could find him downstairs, putting water in the basement and showing his greater physicality. When he did that Canelo won rounds. But what Canelo did not do all throughout the fight that made it the kind of fight that Lara won was that Canelo did not use his jab enough to stabilize Lara on the outside to take away that outside sniper attack, that outside punching away. He did not use the jab. So a lot of the times when he was walking in, he did get caught on the way in when he didn’t get all the way there to the body.”
Lara is right about Canelo not throwing enough jabs in the fight. He was mostly just plodding forward looking to throw combinations to the head and body, and getting nailed by shots from Lara while coming forward. Without jabbing, Canelo walked into a lot of punches to the head. When Canelo would get in punching range, Lara would move away, leaving Canelo to wildly throw air punches that badly missed and made him look silly and uncoordinated. You have to ask the question about why Canelo’s trainers didn’t have him using his jab during the fight. I think that’s a failure of his training team for them not to have had him making adjustments in that one area.
“Look, at the end of the fight 115-113, okay, you can’t argue with that,” Atlas said. “One guy likes aggressiveness and the other guy likes boxing. But come on, please, 117-111? Are you kidding me? Look, Golden Boy Promotions, for people who follow such things, they’re in flux, they’re having problems right now. Did anyone think, they already lost their CEO Richard Schaefer, if they lose their star [Canelo], the second biggest star in the game behind Mayweather; if they lose that fight, they’re out of business. It’s a garage sale. It’s not Golden Boy anymore. It’s Bronze boy, not Golden Boy anymore. They had to win that. I’m not saying anything’s amiss. All I’m saying is they have a judge from New Mexico that’s got it 117-111…What do you think boxing wanted? Canelo vs. Cotto or Lara vs. Cotto?”
Canelo is Golden Boy’s franchise fighter, and it definitely would have hurt if he had lost the fight because they really don’t have anyone else that has that kind of popularity with their company. A lot of their fighters have drifted away to Al Haymon recently. It’s definitely a good thing for Golden Boy that Canelo didn’t lose the fight, because what would they have done had he lost?
It’s going to be difficult for Canelo to keep winning and remaining the franchise guy for Golden Boy if he keeps struggling badly and winning controversial decisions like he did against Lara and Austin Trout. Canelo already lost to Mayweather. But if he loses to Cotto, where is Canelo going to go? They’re not going to match Canelo against Gennady Golovkin, and it’s unknown how much longer Canelo can make weight at junior middleweight.
Once Canelo is at middleweight, it’s going to be tough to justify dragging welterweights up in weight to fight him. He’s obviously not going to fight Lara again, and they’ve shown no interest in fighting Demetrius Andrade.
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