Mauricio Lara warns Leigh Wood: “No injury can save you from this” on February 18th

Image: Mauricio Lara warns Leigh Wood: "No injury can save you from this" on February 18th
By Boxing News - 01/09/2023 - Comments

By Charles Brun: knockout artist Mauricio Lara is ready to rip away the WBA featherweight title from newly elevated champion Leigh Wood on February 18th on DAZN from the Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, England.

Lara, 24, will be again the visiting fighter to England, fighting the hometown guy Wood and hoping he doesn’t take the easy way out like Josh Warrington did by transforming himself into a billy goat on the night to ram his way out of the fight.

Wood (26-2, 16 KOs) should have already fought Lara, but he bowed out of the fight with a supposedly injured bicep. Lara is highly suspicious of Wood’s injury, believing that he wasn’t hurt, and faked it to avoid getting a good hiding from him.

With all the money Wood can make in a domestic-level fight against the recently dethroned IBF champion Josh Warrington, he will lose a lot by getting beaten by Lara on February 18th.

There’s a lot of cash that will go out the window if Wood gets crushed by Lara, and it’s questionable whether he’ll be able to come back from this to win another world title.

Goodness knows Wood was in the right place at the right time fighting the light-hitting WBA ‘regular’ champion Can Xu in July 2021 at the Matchroom headquarters in Brentwood, Essex.

It was a weak champion that Wood fought, and some believe that he got away with murder with the straight-arm tactics he repeatedly used throughout the bout to keep Xu from getting close enough to land his shots.

A good referee would have penalized Wood for the straight arms he used to gain an edge in that fight, but he got away with it.

Surprisingly, the 34-year-old Wood is willing to face Lara, considering how awful the Nottingham native looked poor in his last fight ten months ago, needing a miracle twelfth round knockout to defeat the technically superior Michael Conlan.

Had Conlan not gassed out from slugging Wood with nonstop headshots, he would have easily won. After the fight, Wood looked like he’d crawled through a minefield, looking bloody & battered.

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You can argue that if a non-puncher like Conlan was able to do that to the old warrior Wood, what will a young lion like the 24-year-old Lara do to him?

“I have been waiting for this opportunity for two years, and I am not going to waste it,” Mauricio Lara said about his title shot against Wood.

“In February 2021, I beat Warrington in England; now, in 2023, I will do the same with Wood. The WBA 126-lb World Title goes to Mexico. Your time has come, Leigh Wood; no “injury” can save you now from this.”