Lara defeats Smith, calls out Mayweather

By Boxing News - 12/13/2014 - Comments

lara66By Dan Ambrose: WBA World junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (20-2-2, 12 KOs) totally dominated 36-year-old former IBF 154 pound champion Ishe Smith (26-7, 12 KOs) on Friday night in beating him by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision at the Illusions Theater, in San Antonio, Texas, USA.

The final judges’ scores were 119-109, 119-109 and 117-111.

Lara, 31, took the first few rounds to get warmed up as he stood stationary in the early going. However, once Lara figured out what Smith had, he changed his game plan up by getting mobile and battering him with pot shots from rounds 5 through 12.

Smith fought well enough to win rounds 7 and 11, and that was only because Lara chose to stand in front of him more in those rounds than he did in the other.
Smith threw a lot of body shots, but most of his punches were blocked on the gloves of Lara.

Smith found a way to go around Lara’s guard in the 11th round to land his body shots when Lara chose to stand stationary. But in the 12th, Lara was back on his bike and was able to avoid Smith’s hard body shots.

The fight looked a lot like a replay of Lara’s fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez only this time the judges gave Lara the decision. You can make an argument that Lara did everything in this fight that he did in the Canelo fight. The only difference is that he wasn’t fighting the highly popular Canelo, who is difficult to beat by a decision. The was one-sided as that one with Lara nailing Smith with pot shots in the center of the ring, and only getting hit with an occasional body shot.

After the fight Lara said “I want to fight Floyd Mayweather. He’s one of the best.”
As good as this fight would be, it’s not likely that Mayweather is going to agree to fight Lara because he’s bigger than Mayweather and it’s a fight that likely wouldn’t sell.

Other boxing results on the card:

Christopher Pearson UD 10 Steve Martinez
Badou Jack TKO 6 Francisco Sierra
Ashley Theophane UD 10 Miguel Zuniga
Ronald Gavril KO 1 Jose Miguel Rodriguez Berrio
Andrew Tabiti KO 1 Ernest Reyna
Lanell Bellows TKO 3 Rahman Mustafa Yusubov
Ladarius Miller UD 4 James Burns
Juan Heraldez KO2 Eric Butler



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