By Mike Smith: Unbeaten WBA World junior middleweight champion Brian Carlos Castano (15-0-1, 11 KOs) retained his title on Saturday night in fighting to a 12 round draw against former WBA champion Erislandy Lara (25-3-3, 14 KOs) on SHOWTIME at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The judges had the scored 115-113 for Castano, 115-113 for Lara, and 114-114 even. Boxing News 24 scored it for Castano by the score 116-112.
This was an exciting fight between these two warriors. A rematch would be an excellent for the boxing fans.
Castano was the one pushing the fight, throwing more punches, and working harder to force the action. The judges were likely impressed with Lara’s late surge in the last four rounds in the 9th through the 12th. Castano lost some of the zip on his shots, and Lara was able to get into the fight.
In the 12th round, Lara landed the better shots against a tired looking Castano, who left himself open while going on the attack. It appeared that Castano had done more than enough to get the nod by the three judges based on his work in the first eight rounds of the fight, but they gave Lara a lot of the close rounds. That’s not surprising, because Lara is the more established fighter of the two having held the World Boxing Association junior middleweight title from 2014 to 2018. Never the less, Lara still winds up with nothing to show for his work tonight given that the fight was scored a draw.
Castano retains his WBA title, and he can either move on and fight someone else or have his management arrange a rematch. It’ll depend on the money obviously, and the other options that might float Castano’s way. Now that Castano has been seen by a lot of different fighters and their managers, it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s given an offer for an interesting fight. Castano against Jarrett Hurd would be a nice fight, as would a match against Jaime Munguia.
With the fight being scored a 12 round draw, Castano, 29, retains his WBA ‘regular’ 154 lb title. There’s no word whether the two will face each other in a rematch. Lara has options. He can always face IBF/WBA junior middleweight champion Jarrett Hurd in a rematch, although it’s a fight that he might fancy given how much punishment he took last April in losing to him by a 12 round split decision. There’s also WBO champion Jaime Munguia, but he’s promoted by Golden Boy Promotions. They might not want to let Munguia fight Lara. WBC champion Tony Harrison is also an option for Lara.
Lara landed 130 of 825 shots for a connect percentage of 16, according to CompuBox. The Argentinean connected on 195 of 863 shots for a 23% connect percentage.