LAS VEGAS – It wasn’t pretty. In terms of style, it was more of a miss than a hit. More whiff than wow. A lot was expected of Canelo Alvarez and Erislandy Lara. In the end, however, it was exactly what many thought it would be.
Controversial.
Split decisions always are.
Alvarez won it. But he didn’t exactly celebrate it. There was frustration in the wake of his narrow victory Saturday nght. Without unanimity, criticism is bound to follow Canelo, no matter who’s next on his dance card. If anybody came away from the bout looking good, it had to be Miguel Cotto. There’s been a lot talk that Cotto would face the winner. Right now, it looks as if he’d beat the winner.
Even in victory, Alvarez’ liabilities were apparent throughout the 12 rounds against the quicker, more agile Lara.
“He didn’t come to fight,’’ Alvarez (44-1-1, 31 KOs said. “He came to run.’’
But there’s no prohibition on running in any of boxing’s current rule books. Lara (19-2-2, 12 KOs) did what he has done best. He circled Alvarez often enough to make the red-headed Mexican dizzy. The Cuban defector stepped in, stepped out. He ducked and bobbed beneath and around Alvarez hooks that were thrown with enough force to create a breeze that could be felt in at ringside.
“I know I made him look bad in front of his own people,’’ said Lara, who wore the American flag on one side of his trucks and the Cuban flag on the other.
But Lara also had to know that winning a close fight at the MGM Grand was unlikely. The capacity crowd of 14,239 was dominated by Canelo-chanting fans. Lara scored with quick combos, especially in the early rounds. But he never seemed to pursue a knockout, or even a knockdown that could have been decisive on the score cards. Judge Dave Moretti scored it for Alvarez, 115-113. Levi Martinez gave it to Canelo by a wide margin, 117-11. On Jerry Roth’s card, Lara was a 115-113 winner.
There were at least two elements that could have given Canelo an edge. In the seventh, a Canelo uppercut left Lara with a nasty cut above his right eye. Blood from the wound seemed to bother him during the subsequent rounds. Then, there were successive rounds, the sixth through the ninth, when Canelo was effective with a combination of body punches. According to CompuBox, Alvarez landed 73 power shots to the body.
“It was a difficult fight,’’ Canelo promoter Oscar De La Hoya said. “Everybody thought it would be. The message was that he was landing combinations. He was landing solid shots to the body.’’
De La Hoya then smiled, almost in relief. With the Alvarez victory, De La Hoya’s company can expect another chance at big-money maker featuring the popular Mexican. That might have been the real message.
More for the $$$ on the PPV Ticket
The decision was unanimous, but the reviews were mixed for ex-champion Abner Mares (27-1-1, 14 KOs) in beating Puerto Rican Jonathan Oquendo (24-4, 16 KOs) in his first fight since Jhonny Gonzalez knocked him out. Mares, who scored heavily with body punches, appeared tentative and conceded he was sluggish in a 10-round featherweight bout, which left him with a nasty cut over his left eye from head butt in the fourth.
Juan Manuel Lopez, a former champion at two weights, has been in a desperate battle to resurrect his career. Lopez (34-4, 31 KOs) was told he could be one loss away from the end. That loss landed on his future like shrapnel in a fast-and-furious stunner delivered by Francisco Vargas (20-0-1, 8 KOs), a Mexican junior-lightweight whose knockdown of Lopez in a wild third round led to the Puerto Rican’s surrender while still on the stool before the start of the fourth.
The PPV card began with a back-and-forth exchange that Los Angeles junior-welterweight Mauricio Herrera (21-4, 7 KOs) managed to narrowly win by majority decision over Johan Perez (19-2-1, 13 KOs), a lanky Venezuelan whose long, looping punches landed without much impact.
Rest of the Undercard
ON-TV: In a televised intro to Showtime pay-per-view telecast, Tomoki Kameda proved to be more than just a warm-up act. Kameda (30-0, 18 KOs), the World Boxing Organizations’ bantamweight champion, got the show rocking with a liver shot that resulted in a stoppage of Pungluang Singyu that was as abrupt as it was dramatic.
Kameda, a Tokyo fighter who has been banned from fighting in his own country by the Japanese commission, appeared to be in trouble against Singyu (46-3, 31 KOs), a kick boxer from Thailand. The aggressive Singyu rocked Kameda with a body-and-head combo in the fourth. He relentlessly moved forward in fifth and again in the sixth. It looked as if the Thai fighter sensed he had a chance at an upset.
But after a jab and head-butt in the seventh, Kameda landed a paralyzing left to the liver. Singyu seemed to freeze for a brief second and then collapsed as though he had been shot. Singyu was cut above one eye. Blood and anguish covered his face. It was over. One look at Singyu and Russell Mora ended at 1:35 of the round.
OFF-TV: It was a short introduction. Sweet, too. Jason Quigley, an Irish Olympian, was a winner in his pro debut within 90 seconds. Quigley overwhelmed Howard Reece (2-7, 1 KO) of Ocala, Fla., in a middleweight bout stopped by referee Jay Nady at 1:22 of the opening round. . . . Yoandris Salinas (20-1-2, 13 KOs) of Miami got the contender knocked out of him by Enrique Quevedo (16-7-1, 10 KOs), a Los Angeles junior-featherweight who knocked him down three times before Mora stopped it in the fifth. . . .Puerto Rican junior welterweight John Karl Sosa opened the show three-and-a-half hours before the pay-per-view part of the Showtime telecast began. Amid echoes in an empty arena, a handful of ushers watched Sosa (12-0, 6 KOs) win the matinee, battling through an unexpected challenge from Mexican Luis Bello (5-2, 2 KOs) for a six-round split decision. …Quitting time: It arrived after three rounds of a sustained beating from Los Angeles middleweight Yamaguchi Falcao (2-0, 1 KOs), who won a TKO when the corner for Puerto Rican Jesus Cruz (1-2-1) threw in the towel before the fourth.
