By Edward Chaykovsky

WBA 'regular' junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12KOs) was not impressed by Saul "Canelo" Alvarez's March TKO of Alfredo Angulo.

Canelo (43-1-1, 31KOs) battered Angulo from round to round until the referee had seen enough and stopped the match in the tenth round. Angulo looked slower than usual, there was no pop on his punches and he was unable to keep up with the younger fighter.

But last June, Angulo looked like a totally different fighter when he pushed Lara to his limit. He applied a lot of pressure and dropped Lara in the fourth and ninth rounds. In the tenth, Lara made Angulo quit after causing an eye injury with a perfectly timed counter.

Lara feels Angulo never fully recovered from the damage that he took last June and became a punching bag for Canelo in March.

"I thought it was a bad fight. That wasn't the same Angulo. A lot of the writers were there when I fought Angulo and it was a completely different fighter. I'm not going to say Angulo threw the fight [as some reports have accused]. I'm not going to accuse any fighter of that. I just know that 100% he wasn't the same, he wasn't in shape and anybody who knows boxing could see that," Lara said.

Lara will get the opportunity to prove that he's the best fighter at 154, when he faces Canelo on July 12th from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

"I just have to stick my boxing. When I'm well trained and focused, there is no one in the world that can beat me," Lara said.