By Keith Idec

Erislandy Lara hopes to secure another big fight later this year by beating Yuri Foreman on Friday night.

The Cuban southpaw wants a rematch with Canelo Alvarez. Lara thinks that fight will become available because he doesn’t expect the Mexican superstar to fight Gennady Golovkin in September, as promised by Oscar De La Hoya, Alvarez’s promoter.

“He’s all talk,” Lara told BoxingScene.com through an interpreter. “He’s never gonna fight Golovkin.”

Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) is scheduled to fight Daniel Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) on March 18 at Madison Square Garden in an HBO Pay-Per-View main event. A win would inch the Kazakh knockout artist toward a highly anticipated, pay-per-view extravaganza against Alvarez (48-1-1, 34 KOs).

The 33-year-old Lara (23-2-2, 13 KOs) would be more than willing to fight Alvarez again once, as Lara predicts, Alvarez scraps his supposed plan to challenge Golovkin for middleweight supremacy.

“I would love to fight Canelo,” Lara said. “I, personally, think I won the fight. A lot of people I speak to all thought I won the fight. And that’s always gonna be a fight with an asterisk, a question mark. And great champions, like Floyd Mayweather, for example – fought Castillo and came right back and fought him the next fight. That’s what great fighters do.

“I’m willing to fight Canelo. My competition hasn’t been the same since [I fought] Canelo, but neither has Canelo’s competition. So in reality, if Canelo can’t get a big fight, he needs to come and fight me and fix the score.”

Lara lost a controversial split decision to Alvarez in a very competitive fight 2½ years ago in Las Vegas. Two judges – Levi Martinez (117-111) and Dave Moretti (115-113) – scored that 12-round, non-title fight for Alvarez. The third judge, Jerry Roth, credited Lara with a 115-113 victory at MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Since losing to Alvarez, Lara is 4-0. He has beaten Ishe Smith, Delvin Rodriguez, Jan Zaveck and, most recently, Vanes Martirosyan in their rematch May 21 in Las Vegas.

His fight against Brooklyn’s Foreman (34-2, 10 KOs) will mark Lara’s first action since the Martirosyan rematch. Spike will televise the Lara-Foreman fight from Hialeah Park Racing & Casino, just outside of Miami (9 p.m. ET).

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.