Photo By Gabriel Gonzalez
For boxing fans, satiation is exceedingly rare. Too often, the biggest fights are only pipe dreams, destined to be squashed by squabbling promoters, greedy managers, or hesitant fighters. It makes being a hardcore fan of the sweet science an incredibly frustrating endeavor. It would be easier, and frankly much less aggravating to eschew boxing for another sport.
The Super Bowl won’t ever get cancelled because one of the quarterbacks injures his thumb while practicing.
The Stanley Cup Finals won’t be postponed because a General Manager asks for a bigger cut of the pie.
Many fighters, the ones who reach a level of success only a tiny fraction of boxers will ever see, often sidestep danger in favor of easier matchups. It makes total sense for the pugilists–why take a greater risk when you’ll still reap the monetary benefits of a sure-win?
It makes sense for the promoters as well–why risk your fighter taking a loss? Some losses can cause irreparable damage to a young career.
Is it fair that Danny Garcia will soon meet blown up lightweight Rod Salka instead of rematching the vastly underrated Mauricio Herrera? Herrera gave Garcia hell when they met in March. Many observers felt that Herrera was robbed.
To us, the answer is easy. Get back in the ring, and finish the business at hand. But the reality is that few fighters make that choice.
There are some fighters however, who do make the choice to travel the more difficult road. Canelo Alvarez is one of those fighters.
The Mexican superstar could have easily sidestepped Erislandy Lara. Actually, he didn’t have to fight at all after beating the living hell out of Alfredo Angulo this past March. He could have waited out the Sergio Martinez vs. Miguel Cotto winner and made a mega-fight in late fall.
Instead, he chose to fight. And what a fighter he picked.
Lara will never be the A side of an attraction. That is no knock on the man, it’s just a fact. Perhaps we could look at him as this generation’s Winky Wright. He’s a pure 154-pound southpaw with excellent boxing skills, a difficult style and nearly zero fanbase outside of the hardcore.
He’s also extremely difficult to defeat.
Alvarez is easily one of boxing’s biggest stars. His pay-per-view fight with Angulo, the start of a ridiculous oversaturation of PPV events, did 350,000 buys. That is an exceptional number when you consider the fact that both fighters were from Mexico and neither can speak much English at all.
His record stands at 43-1-1, with his lone loss coming at the hands of the all-time-great Floyd Mayweather Jr. He rebounded from that by destroying Angulo and stamping his name on the crowded list of pay-per-view players.
Consider that he’s merely 23 years old.
Alvarez demanded to fight Mayweather because he wanted to prove himself against the best. The loss clearly didn’t change his thinking, because he’s now up against a fighter that very few have been successful against.
Lara’s only defeat came against Paul Williams in 2011. It was a decision loss so ghastly that the judges were each suspended after the fight. Anyone watching that fight sober would have been hard pressed to score more than three rounds Williams’ way. But such is life for the challenger. It’s a respect issue, and it’s hard to get.
Alvarez is giving the hardcore fans exactly what they want, and he should be commended for it. Again, he didn’t need the fight. He wanted it.
Now, can he win it?
Their styles are quite different–Canelo is an orthodox boxer/puncher who utilizes combination punching. He goes to the body extremely effectively and he seems to take a shot pretty well as he’s bulked up.
Lara is the southpaw boxer, but he does have deceptive power and ridiculous fortitude. Lara himself fought Angulo last June, and while Angulo was hitting him with harder shots, dropping him twice, Lara never buckled. He kept firing away and got the stoppage win when Angulo’s eye swelled up so badly it made Hasim Rahman wince.
There are questions about both fighters. Alvarez was outboxed over long stretches of his fight with Austin Trout before being whitewashed by Mayweather. While Mayweather is a freakish talent, Lara is the next-best fighter Alvarez will have ever been in the ring with. Has he learned enough to not get caught up in a cat and mouse game?
Lara, for all of his skill, took a lot of punishment from Angulo. If Angulo could bash him all over the ring, what will he do when taking blows from the far-better Alvarez? Lara also seems to take rounds off. He won’t be able to do that against Canelo.
Photo by Holly Stein/Getty Images
Lara should use his jab and lateral movement to keep Canelo off balance, and fire the straight left when in range. He needs to avoid the ropes, and avoid any semblance of a fire fight.
Alvarez needs to pressure Lara and throw to the body. That will open him up for the power shots to the head and take some steam off of anything Lara throws in return. Alvarez is eight-years younger, but he’s fought twice as many times. He can use his youth and his experiences against Trout and Mayweather to his advantage.
So who will be the better fighter Saturday night–the boxer who has made a career of flying under the radar while dominating opponents, or the star trying to pave his path to greatness?
For Erislandy Lara, he has one shot to not only prove that he’s an elite fighter, but to score another big pay day for himself. If he can pull off the victory, he’ll finally have some pull to attract the biggest names in the sport, ones that otherwise would avoid him like typhoid.
For Canelo Alvarez, only massive fights await him if he gets the victory. He is staring directly at an absolute mega fight with the middleweight champion of the world, Miguel Cotto. Or he could challenge one of the many high-profile welterweights to come up to meet him. He’ll be adored by his fans regardless of the choice.
Here’s to betting it won’t be the easy way out.
Some random notes from around the sport:
Looks like Floyd will be rematching Marcos Maidana in September. How about instead of paying Maidana off, he lets him use his damn gloves? For everyone who believes Floyd will have an easy time in the rematch, what happens if one of those overhand rights Maidana fires from the rafters actually lands this time?
Rumors are abound that Adrien “Penis Tape” Broner will be fighting Lucas Matthysse on the undercard. Why do Broner’s people hate him? Although Matthysse has finally looked vulnerable lately, he still possesses the power of an oversized mule and the sanity of Gary Busey. If the fight comes off, good for Broner. He’ll never be Mayweather, but he’s certainly not taking any easy roads.
Ruslan Chagaev defeated Fres Oquendo for a heavyweight title–I’m not even going to finish this sentence. Seriously, this was for a title. Is it just me, or does it seem like Oquendo has been fighting since The Cosby Show was on the air?
Speaking of fighting WAAAAAAYYYYYY longer than you should, Evander Holyfield finally officially called it a day. No snark here. The man is one of the greatest fighters of all time.
Terence Crawford showed the kind of grit and skill in his fight with Yuriorkis Gamboa that only real champions have. When things got rough, he made adjustments. He might have been the bigger fighter, but he won because he was the smarter fighter. Let’s see some more.
And let’s see more of Gamboa for that matter. Move him down to 130 and let him get to work. There’s way too much talent there to just waste. It might be tough to find room though, with 50 Cent’s stable of busy fighters like, um…
Let’s see less of Ron Stander though. I partially believe that he’s still at that arena in Omaha shadowboxing merrily while the janitors clean up around him.
My fighter of the month goes to Michael Farenas. Call me old fashioned, but I like seeing coddled prospects get broken by Filipino southpaws. Let’s see him back on FNF soon.
Header photo by Porfirio Barron Jr./Round By Round Boxing
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