This Saturday night on Showtime P.P.V. Erislandy Lara and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will square off. This bout is not for a title but is intriguing nonetheless. It pits the top two fighters at middle weight that aren’t Mayweather or Pacquiao against one another. It’s rare that two fighters ranked this high will risk their records for nothing but bragging rights(and a fair amount of dough) .
Here are what I find interesting about the fighters and the fight.
Erislandy Lara is an accomplished product of the storied Cuban Olympic program. In order to go pro he had to flee Cuba and defect eventually making it to America.
He’s a very slick lefty, that can pop with both hands and has great defense. He is quite tough and has fought through adversity in his top fights(the Williams and Angulo bouts immediately come to mind). Which separates him from most of the top prospects in boxing. Has not taken an easy route to the top.
His most notable fights:
- Beat Austin Trout who is a top tier middleweight. Trout had a very recent win over future Hall of Fame fighter Miguel Cotto, and at the time was everyone’s choice to take over the division and challenge Mayweather.
- Beat Alfredo Angulo an above average fighter with a granite chin and a devastating hook. He is an action fighter who fights like a caveman, seriously Google his picture and he really looks like a caveman. I’m a big fan of Angulo, but I’ll admit he’s an easy win for a good boxer. The main thing to take from this fight is that Lara was actually knocked down early in this fight and went on to overcome that knockdown and dominate Angulo.
- Lost a close controversial bout to Paul Williams when Williams was the most feared fighter in the world. Williams was a freak of nature at 6’2” and 154 pounds, extremely fast and had amazing leverage on his punches. At any rate I am not alone in thinking that Lara won the fight going away, while having a huge hematoma on his forehead(from a clash of heads). Williams went on to get stretched by Sergio Martinez and then sadly was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident. The item of note here is that Lara basically decoded the Paul Williams puzzle.
- Beat Carlos Molina and Ronald Hearns(son of one of my all time favorites Tommy “Hitman” Hearns) both of whom are slightly above average fighters who’ve had marginal success and were hot at the time of their respective bouts.
Canelo Alvarez , went pro at 16 years old in Mexico. He is the country’s favorite fighter de jour and basically the next highest drawing fighter behind Mayweather and Pacquiao. Alvarez has dominated pretty much everyone he’s been in the ring with, including the two big opponents that he has in common with Lara. He was schooled by Mayweather to the point of looking like an ordinary middling fighter.
His most notable fights:
- Beat Austin Trout , after trout was fresh off of his victory over Cotto, this bout in my opinion was his best performance as a pro. Prior to this he had been pummeling blown up fighters from a division or two below.
- Lost a lopsided fight to Mayweather, but it’s Mayweather so that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
- Beat Alfredo Angulo without ever being in trouble in the fight.
- Beat Josesito Lopez who is a very good fighter but really too small to be fighting at Light Middleweight. If I remember correctly Lopez had come up TWO weight classes for this fight and it showed as he was banged out pretty quickly.
- Beat Shane Mosely decisively, Mosely although shopworn at the time is a shoe in for the Hall of Fame and one of the fastest fighters of recent memory.
- Beat Kermit Cintron, and Alfonso Gomez both are slightly above average fighters who at one point in their careers were ranked highly and thought of as low level headliners. If you’ve watched Friday Night Fights on ESPN in the last decade it’s quite possible that you might have seen one of these fighters ply their craft.
I’m pretty sure that Canelo will be the heavy favorite in this fight. If I were to put money it I’d go with Lara by decision. Here’s why.
In boxing there’s a spectrum of styles that all fighters lie on. That spectrum has for lack of better terms tactical slick boxers on one side and rugged devastating Punchers on the other end. You can have fighters on either end or anywhere in between. If I am asked my opinion on a fight I always start off by determining where in that spectrum each fighter belongs. I then lean towards the one that is closest to tactical boxer. Some of the criteria I use to do determine placement is who can fight in retreat and still score, who can effectively avoid further damage when in trouble. Basically which of the two fighters can hit and not get hit. In this fight I think that fighter is Lara.
