By Dan Ambrose: Erislandy Lara says he warned IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) before his fight with the highly popular Golden Boy Promotions star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) that it would be hard for him to get a decision over him in their fight a week ago on September 16 on HBO pay-per-view.
Lara says Golovkin definitely won the fight over Canelo. The judges, however, saw it differently. They scored it a draw by these set of 118-110 for Canelo, 115-113 for Golovkin and 114-114.
Lara knows how it feels to be denied a victory over Canelo. Lara lost a controversial 12 round split decision to Canelo in 2014 in a fight that many boxing fans thought he should have won. Lara out-boxed Canelo and limited to him to just 31 punches landed to the head in the entire fight. Afterwards, Lara asked for a rematch, but was told to get in the back of the line.
”I had a conversation with Triple G. I let him know it could be difficult to win a decision against Canelo, but I definitely saw Golovkin win the fight that night,” said Lara to Thaboxingvoice. ”Boxing has changed quite a bit. It’s more of a business.”
Golovkin may suffer the same fate of being denied a decision when/if he faces Canelo in a rematch. Golden Boy will likely stick the rematch back in Las Vegas. If the theory that Golovkin can’t ever win a decision over a popular fighter like Canelo is true, then he’ll either receive a loss or another draw. It would be bad for Canelo’s popularity if he receives another controversial decision, but there are enough casual boxing fans that won’t know about the particulars of the fight not to hurt his popularity.
The Canelo vs. Golovkin replay – ‘The Draw in the Desert’ was televised last Saturday night before the Jorge Linares vs. Luke Campbell fight on HBO Boxing, and a lot of fans got a chance to see the Canelo-GGG fight for the first time. In looking at social media, there was no storm of angry fans upset about the 12 draw the 3 judges turned in for the fight. The fans that saw last week’s Canelo vs. Golovkin fight for the first time were very upset. They felt that Golovkin was robbed by the judges. The boxing fans noticed how Canelo was exhausted continually from the 4th round on, and only fighting in the first minute of each round. Canelo would tire after that and do nothing in the last 2 minutes of the round other than run around the ring and throw pot shots.
”We saw what happened. He talks about my style of boxing. I stick and move. He did the same thing in their fight,” said Lara about Canelo.
Canelo used the same fighting style as Lara in trying to box Golovkin. However, Lara doesn’t fight with his back against the ropes the way Canelo was doing. Lara stays in the center of the ring and jabs and moves. Caneo wasn’t doing much jabbing against Golovkin. He was moving and looking to throw shoeshine punches.
”Oscar De La Hoya controls the sport right now, and that’s what’s going on with that,” said Lara about Canelo being given controversial decision wins over Golovkin, Austin Trout and himself.
“We’re going to see another victory,” said Lara bout his next fight.
Lara (24-2-2, 14 KOs) will be defending his WBA Super World junior middleweight title next month against Terrell Gausha (20-0, 9 KOs) on October 14 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Lara says he wants to clean out the 154 lb. division after that fight; although he would be interested in moving up to 160 for the right fight.
