lara By Dan Ambrose: WBA World junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (20-2-2, 12 KOs) has a title defense coming up in 10 days from now against Delvin Rodriguez (28-7-4, 16 KOs) on June 12th on Spike TV on Premier Boxing Champions from the IIC Pavilion in Chicago, Illinois.

The undercard has a very good fight between the highly ranked light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev (8-0, 8 KOs) and Doudou Ngumbu (34-6, 13 KOs). This fight could turn out to be even more entertaining than the main event because Lara and Rodriguez.

Ngumbu has a great chin, and he could be the guy to extend Beterbiev the entire 12 round distance. Up until now, Beterbiev has never gone past 4 rounds during his short two year pro career. Ngumbu is going to need to come up with some offense if he wants to keep Beterbiev off of him because he’s very likely to crowd him and unload a lot of heavy artillery for as long as this fight lasts.

In Beterbiev’s last three fights, he’s stopped Gabriel Campillo, Jeff Page Jr. and Tavoris Cloud.

Lara is trying to put more distance between him and his controversial defeat at the hands of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last summer in July. Lara still feels he did enough to deserve the decision, but he has to live with the defeat. Two of the judges gave the win to Canelo while the third had him winning.

Since Canelo and Golden Boy Promotions have no interest in a rematch with Lara, he has to move on and continue to defend his WBA 154lb title. Lara’s belt wasn’t on the line for the fight because Canelo wanted a catch-weight of 155lbs for the fight.

Lara is also interested in facing WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, but there hasn’t been any reciprocal interest from the Kazakhstan star. I’m not sure if it’s a fight that can get made though because Golovkin fights on HBO and Lara for Premier Boxing Champions.

Rodriguez, 35, hasn’t done too well lately in winning only one of out of his last three fights. He fought to a 10 round draw against Joachim Alcine last year in May. He’s been out of the ring ever since, which isn’t a good thing. Before that, Rodriguez was stopped in three rounds by Miguel Cotto in October 2013. Rodriguez’s last victory was against Freddie Hearn in May of 2013 in stopping him in 8 rounds. In February of 2013, Rodriguez outclassed George Tahdooahnippah in stopping him in 6 rounds.