By Allan Fox: Perhaps the real winner for tonight’s fight between Vanes Martirosyan (32-0-1, 20 KO’s) and Erislandy Lara (17-1-2, 11 KO’s) is WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez, who now has an excuse not to fight either of them next after the two fighters fought to a 9 round technical decision tonight in their World Boxing Council 154 pound eliminator bout at the Wynn Resort, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

The fight was halted after Martirosyan was cut over his left eye from a head-butt in the 9th when he rammed heads with Lara. The judges’ scores were 86-85 to Martirosyan, 86-86 even, and 87-84 to Lara.

The winner of tonight’s fight between Lara and Martirosyan was supposed to become Alvarez’s mandatory challenger and the WBC president Jose Sulaiman had recently said that Alvarez has to fight the Lara-Martirosyan winner next. But now Alvarez is free to fight whoever he pleases because nothing was decided tonight. Talk about being lucky, although Alvarez still likely won’t make out that well because his chances of getting the big named opponent that he wants next isn’t good.

Neither Lara or Martirosyan looked particularly good tonight. Martirosyan threw more punches and was the one that was putting constant pressure on Lara. However, Lara landed the cleaner shots and did a good job of countering Martirosyan at every opportunity. Lara, however, failed to let his hands go enough to take advantage of all the openings that Martirosyan made available to him.

Now it’s likely that Martirosyan and Lara will have to fight each other again so that a winner can be decided in the WBC junior middleweight title eliminator. In the meantime, Alvarez will be free to fight just about anyone he pleases. Like I said, he’s not going to get to fight the guys he wants – Floyd Mayweather Jr., Miguel Cotto or Sergio Martinez. Most likely Alvarez will fight someone old like 40-year-old Ricardo Mayorga, because that’s been his pattern for the past couple of years – to fight either old guys or smaller fighters.

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Unbeaten featherweight contender Mikey Garcia (30-0, 26 kO’s) locked himself into a title fight against WBO featherweight champion Orlando Salido by stopping Jonathan Barros (34-4-1, 17 KO’s) by an 8th round TKO. Garcia landed a perfect land hand that put Barros down and the fight was then stopped as a result.

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Undefeated super bantamweight Jesse Magdaleno (12-0, 9 KO’s) stopped a badly overmatched journeyman Jose Silveira (12-9, 4 KO’s) by a 1st round TKO. Magdaleno pounded Silveita unceasingly until he dropped. The fight was then halted at 2:59 of the round.

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Other boxing results:

Anthony Flores TKO 3 Luis Hernandez
Eric Flores UD 4 Daniel Calzada
Jesse Hart KO 3 Joshua Meyers
Andrew Hernandez TKO 2 Rudy Puga
Brett Rather UD 4 Avery Gibson