By Brian Webber: Eddie Hearn believes Leigh Wood will “flatten” challenger Mauricio Lara this Saturday night when he defends his WBA featherweight title against the devasting puncher, live on DAZN in front of an expected crowd of 8,000+ pro-Wood fans at the Motorpoint Arena, in Nottingham, England.
The odds-makers feel differently than Hearn, placing the 24-year-old Lara (25-2-1, 18 KOs) as a 3-to-1 favorite over the 34-year-old Wood (26-2, 16 KOs), and it’s understandable why they’ve come up with those odds.
Wood is a little long in the tooth, about to turn 35, and his punch resistance isn’t ideal to be fighting someone as young as powerful as Lara.
Moreover, Wood’s fighting style is made to order for Lara, as he likes to go to war with his opponents, and he’s the perfect guy for the Mexican to destroy.
If you were to create a fighter in a laboratory ideal for Lara to crush within four or five rounds, you would come up with Wood. He’s the type of fighter that is vulnerable to the way Lara fights, and unless Wood has been refashioned by his trainer Ben Davison, he won’t last long on Saturday night.
Davison will likely have Wood avoiding exchanges with Lara, focusing on staying outside, jabbing, moving, clinching frequently, and using his illegal straight-arm tactic.
Wood doesn’t have the engine to move for 12 rounds, so he will have to stand and fight Lara at some point. Likewise, clinching Lara won’t get the job done, and neither will the illegal straight arm we saw Wood use all night in his victory over Can Xu in 2021.
The problem that Wood has is he’s never beaten anyone as good as Lara before, and he’s lost to fighters that weren’t as nearly as talented.
Wood’s best wins came against the aforementioned Can Xu and Michael Conlan. Given that Wood arguably cheated his way to victory against Xu, it’s hard to give him credit for that victory.
As for Wood’s win over Conlan, that wasn’t anything special because the Irish fighter isn’t viewed as one of the better fighters in the 126-lb division. Also, Conlan was beating the brakes off Wood for the first nine rounds before gassing out in the championship rounds.
Lara came out of nowhere
“People, and rightfully so sometimes, like to moan about boxing match-ups, and I got to say, this is a bizarre match-up,” said Edie Hearn to iFL TV on this Saturday’s fight between WBA featherweight champion Leigh Wood and Mauricio Lara.
“You’ve got this guy Mauricio Lara, whether Josh Warrington was unlucky, and it was a little bit behind closed doors and a little bit about the whole situation. But this guy [Lara] comes from nowhere in Mexico.
“Everyone knew he had potential, everyone knew he was a big puncher, but what you’ve got to understand about Mexican boxing is, you get thrown into fights at the last minute because you can’t get an opportunity outside of your weight class and you get beat.
“So Lara comes into that fight [with Warrington in February 2021] with a couple of defeats. So at the outset, you look at the record and say, ‘He’s alright,’ as did Josh Warrington’s team.
“They said, ‘Yeah, we’ll have him [Lara]. He’s a good fighter, but we think we can beat him.’ He comes over and puts on a wrecking ball performance, and everybody goes, quite honestly, ‘F**k fighting Mauricio Lara.’ That is the general conversation.
“Promoters generally get the blame. If I went to Leigh Wood and [trainer] Ben Davison, which I did with names. I’d love to take credit for this fight. I didn’t even push Mauricio Lara because I thought they’d say, ‘Absolutely, no way.‘ I actually thought [36-year-old] Kiko Martinez would be a good fight [for Leigh Wood].
Team Wood believes they can win
“This was the first time; remember when it was called off last year, and this time,” continued Hearn. “So I said to Ben Davison, ‘What about Kiko Martinez and Leigh Wood?’ And he went, ‘What about Mauricio Lara?’ I was like, ‘Are you having a laugh?’ He goes, ‘It’s a bigger fight and bigger money, and we think it’s just as dangerous as Kiko Martinez. We fancy we can beat him.‘
“When I phoned Mauricio Lara’s team, I don’t think they could believe it. So they see something in this fight where they’re very confident they can beat Mauricio Lara,” Hearn continued about Team Wood. “The reality is, he’s [Wood] nearly a 3 to 1 outsider to win in his backyard in front of 8,000 fans in a voluntary defense.
“Sometimes you take a voluntary defense because someone has massive commercial value, and you’re almost providing them with the opportunity, and someone has paid mad money.
“Joshua against Charles Martin a great example, where that was a voluntary defense for Charles Martin, and we paid him a load of money. It was a dangerous fight for him, but he thought he could win, but the money was out of control.
“This one, he [Wood] goes, ‘I think I can beat him. I fancy the challenge.’ So, whilst I have to take some credit because I got the fight made, you have to give this man unbelievable credit. His profile is growing considerably in British boxing, but to the hardcore, who like to criticize, and again, I don’t mind that give him untold props for this because you want fights like this, and he [Wood] picked him.
“Now, if he was mandatory, people go, ‘He’s mandatory; there’s nothing he can do to get away from it.’ He picked him, and it wasn’t even that he was under pressure from us or DAZN to fight Lara. He went, ‘I want Lara,'” Hearn said.
Leigh can “flatten Mauricio Lara”
“So, I think it’s a complete 50-50 match-up. I don’t agree with the odds in the slightest,” said Hearn. “You’re going to get an unbelievable fight. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Leigh Wood has unbelievable power, sneaky power at times. He can flatten Mauricio Lara, and Mauricio Lara can flatten Leigh Wood.
“I hope this goes rounds because if it goes rounds, you’re going to get a better fight than Conlan-Wood, but this could be over in four or five rounds at the same time,” said Hearn.