Only minutes after thrilling a sellout crowd of 14.239 raucous fans at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Erislandy Lara and Saul Alvarez came to the media room to answer questions from the press and reflect on their highly competitive bout. Team Canelo showed up first, as Lara was getting his eye stitched up in the dressing room. Alvarez donned dark sunglasses to conceal the swelling around his own eyes, courtesy of the straight lefts Lara connected with throughout their fight.
“We knew it was going to be that type of fight (chasing Lara around the ring), I was going to be pressing him”, said Canelo. “But I didn’t think it was going to be that long of a marathon”. When asked about whether his corner ever told him he was behind at any point in the fight, he replied, “No they never told me that. They kept telling me to keep the pressure. I felt that I won, I pressured, I made the fight, I ran to him, I landed the combinations.”
Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya (not surprisingly) spoke well of his company’s greatest commodity. “He did extremely well against a slippery opponent,” said De La Hoya. “Saul came to fight. It was a difficult fight and that’s what everybody expected”.
When asked about whether he was ever hurt in the fight, Canelo answered, “You can’t really get hurt with a guy that keeps moving and stays on the back foot. I’m sure he felt my power and that’s why he was running.” The soon to be 24 year old was asked about his willingness to take on such a difficult opponent, he said he simply did it for the fans. “I’m always gonna take the best fights, the tough fights, the fights you guys wanna see.”
As Canelo wrapped up with the media, Team Lara entered the room. Throughout their portion of the press conference Lara’s camp repeatedly brought up the controversial 117-111 score from judge Levi Martinez. “It’s disgraceful what they did to me, whatever judge had it 9-3 is not even worth discussing,” said the Cuban slickster. “We need to do an immediate rematch. I showed I was better tonight and I’ll show it again in a second fight. He knows in his heart that he lost tonight”
When asked if he was ever hurt in the fight, most notably by Canelo’s heavy body punching, Lara replied, “The body shots, nothing hurt. And he didn’t land any head shots”. Co-manager Luis DeCubas steadfastly defended his fighter’s performance when asked if he felt Lara did enough to earn the win. “Levi Martinez needs to be looked into” said DeCubas. “Canelo landed less than 100 punches in 12 rounds; that tells you all you need to know. We made him look worse than Floyd did”.
Most of the press seemed to feel the right man won the fight, but some questioned the scoring. Whether you feel there was a decisive winner or not one thing remains clear, a rematch isn’t going to happen any time soon. “Lara just lost so he has to wait in line (for a rematch),” said De La Hoya. “Canelo won tonight and now we have to move on.” The promoter mentioned that Canelo should return to the ring in November and one of the names being discussed is power punching James Kirkland.
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