WBA World junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (19-2-2, 12 KOs) isn’t coming into his fight this Friday night against 36-year-old former IBF junior middleweight champion Ishe Smith (26-6, 12 KOs) with mental baggage from his last fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez from last July.
Lara lost the fight to Canelo by a 12 round split decision in a bout that really could have gone the other way if Lara had done a little more offensively. Lara feels that he did enough to win the fight, and that’s why he’s coming into this Saturday’s title defense against Smith without feeling regretful about the Canelo match-up. Lara is totally focused on doing his job against Smith, and holding onto his WBA title.
The Lara-Smith fight will be staged at the Illusions Theater, in San Antonio, Texas, USA. Also on the card is super middleweight Badou Jack facing Francisco Sierra. The fight card will be televised on Showtime Championship Boxing.
“Those fights are in the past,” Lara said via ESPN.com. “I think everybody who’s lost a fight gets depressed. The fans, everyone saw that I won a few of them. Everyone knows it. And right now, I’m not worried about that. That’s the past. Now, I have to look to the future and know that I got Ishe Smith in front of me. So, that’s the one I’m worried about and that’s where our main focus is at.”
It makes sense for Lara to forget about his loss to Canelo so that he makes sure that he holds onto his WBA title. As long as Lara keeps winning, he’ll eventually get the bigger fights at some point in the future. Obviously it’s going to take a while before he gets another crack at Canelo, because the red-haired fighter has a number of important fights ahead of him.
Further, it’s not likely that Golden Boy Promotions are going to give Lara another chance at fighting Canelo anytime soon given the problems that he gave Canelo. If there is going to be a second fight between Canelo and Lara, it’ll be because of Canelo demanding it. But in the meantime, Lara can still make things happen with his career by continually defending his WBA title against all comers.
“I’m not one of those guys that says, ‘I would have done this, I would have done that.’ I did what I did,” Lara said. “I won the fight. I feel like I dominated him in the rounds that I did. I thought I won the fight and in boxing if you win, you win. There’s no reason because you’re not the star you have to win 10 rounds to two.”
Lara is in a good position to take care of business on Saturday night against Smith as long as he stays busy and shows some offensive effort. Lara can’t afford to fight as defensively as he did against Canelo if he wants to beat Smith, because he’s going to be taking the fight to Lara looking to outwork him the same way that Canelo did.
