By Rick Reeno
WBA/IBO junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (23-2-2, 13KOs) was shocked, like everyone else, when Friday's announcement came down that Gennady Golovkin (35-0, 32KOs) had reached an agreement to defend his WBA/WBC/IBO/IBF middleweight titles against Kell Brook (36-0, 25KOs), who holds the IBF world title at welterweight.
Golovkin vs. Brook will take place on September 10th from the O2 Arena in London.
Brook, who fought as high as 155 back in 2008, has not fought beyond 151 since 2014. For most of his career fights, Brook has weighed between 146 and 147. He moves up by thirteen pounds for Golovkin.
Lara was a very vocal critic of May's pay-per-view encounter between Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez and Amir Khan. In that fight, Khan moved up by eight pounds to challenge Canelo for his WBC middleweight title at a catch-weight of 155. While Khan was able to use his speed and boxing ability to win the majority of the early rounds, it took a single punch from Canelo - in the sixth - to knock Khan out cold.
Fans were up in arms on Friday, as they were back in February when Canelo-Khan was officially announced. Brook's opposition has been lacking since winning the title from Shawn Porter in 2014. After the outcome of Canelo-Khan, even fewer fans expect a competitive contest in Golovkin-Brook.
Lara has been calling for a Golovkin fight for the last two years and was genuinely surprised with GGG's decision to fight a top welterweight.
The Cuban champion wants a higher power to get involved, because he believes the recent trend of fighters jumping up numerous weight divisions to secure a big payday will eventually end a career or two.
"I might follow their lead and fight Chocolatito," Lara laughed while speaking to BoxingScene.com. "In all seriousness, there's a reason weight classes exist. Golovkin and Canelo don't seem to care [about weight divisions] and you saw what happened to Khan - someone can really get hurt."
