By Keith Idec
Erislandy Lara was somewhat surprised Canelo Alvarez didn’t move forward with a third fight against Gennadiy Golovkin.
The former 154-pound champion was even more surprised when Alvarez began pursuing a showdown with WBO light heavyweight champ Sergey Kovalev. If the Alvarez-Kovalev fight is finalized for November 2, Lara isn’t sure that task will be as easy for Alvarez as odds-makers and some fans seem to think.
“Kovalev’s a really big guy,” Lara told BoxingScene.com through a translator. “If Kovalev’s not a hundred-percent shot and old, then he might be too big for Canelo. That’s a decision for Canelo and his team to make.”
One decision the Mexican superstar seems to have made is not granting Lara a rematch.
Their closely contested, 12-round, 154-pound fight resulted in a split-decision win for Alvarez in July 2014 at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Lara has campaigned for a second shot at the three-division champion, but Alvarez (52-1-2, 35 KOs) will have moved three divisions above Lara’s weight class if he challenges Russia’s Kovalev (34-3-1, 29 KOs).
“Canelo picks and chooses the right fights at the right times,” Lara said. “He’s earned that right, but there’s not many guys for him to fight. If the [rematch] comes, great. If it doesn’t, there’s a lot of other boxers out there, like I’ve proven. I’ve been in some big, big fights before Canelo and after Canelo. I’m gonna continue to be in the big fights. Canelo doesn’t have a lot of big names out there to fight, so at some point I feel the fight can happen. But my focus is not on Canelo Alvarez. My focus is on being great.”
The Cuban-born Lara (25-3-3, 14 KOs) has settled for fighting Alvarez’s older brother, Ramon Alvarez, on Saturday night. Lara and Alvarez (28-7-3, 16 KOs, 1 NC) will square off for the vacant WBA super welterweight title in the main event of a FOX broadcast from The Armory in Minneapolis (8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT).
If the heavily favored Lara wins Saturday night, the 36-year-old southpaw will regain a portion of the WBA 154-pound championship he lost to Jarrett Hurd in their unification fight 16 months ago in Las Vegas.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
