"HONOR & GLORY": OSCAR IS BACK!
By Ed de la Vega, DDS
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 13 Jul 2014
LAS VEGAS -- The fight was dubbed as ?Honor and Glory?- Canelo vs. Lara. At the onset it appears that the fight was meant to hype the fight between two bold gladiators. And indeed they gave a fight that some would say was worth the hype albeit with controversial results.
From the perspective of certain pundits however, the name was double edge sword. It was not just for the honor and glory of the fight itself but for Oscar de la Hoya as well. After all, tonight is his company?s first promotion in a very long time without Sir Richard, the Swiss banker pulling the strings.
But the best part about the whole thing is that Oscar hit this one right on thus making it appear that he is truly back in the driver?s seat so to speak.
The promotion was a huge success and although the powers that be had to reconfigure the seating at the arena to avoid having seating gaps that may show on TV, the attendance is pretty decent. It was announced that 14,239 folks were at the Grand Garden Arena.
Top photo: Oscar de la Hoya (L) is all smiles after the Canelo Alvarez victory over Erislandy Lara Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Canelo Alvarez (L) digs to the body of Erislandy Lara during the Saturday night fight.
The Cubans of course have nothing much to do with the numbers. After all Erislandy Lara did not have a huge following. It was the Mexicans who dominated the numbers. There were green-white-red flags all over the place. Like my photographer-friend said,
?It was a great day to be Mexican?.
The Canelo crowd is tremendous. They are loud and supportive of their hero. I have no doubt they made the whole promotion a huge success.
From our perspective high up on Section 113, I thought that the fight was a lot closer than the score given by my buddy from New Mexico, Levi Martinez who called it 117-111. Incidentally, I bumped into him after the fight and we had a short discussion about his score. He asked me what I thought of the fight and I said I felt it was closer than his score. He justified his score by saying that he scored the few hard hits more than the many that are not so hard.
Frankly, I was slightly disappointed by Canelo?s performance. I expected more from him. He was out-boxed by Lara and threw too many punches that hit nothing but air. And, it took him a long while to finally figure out how to cut off the ring to minimize the effectiveness of Lara?s stick and run style. All that gave reasons for people to think that the fight result was controversial and a re-match should be on hand.
A re-matched however was quickly voided by De La Hoya in the post fight press-conference by saying that ?Lara needs to get in line.? In addition Canelo stated that Lara will get a rematch ?when learns how to fight.?
Scores where 115-113 and 117-111 for Canelo and 115-113 for Lara.
In the supporting main event, Abner Mares (27-1-1, 14KO) of Hawaiian Gardens, CA via Guadalajara, Mexico got back in his winning ways by beating a very determined Jonathan Oquendo ( 24-4-0, 16) of Vega Alta, Puerto Rico. The scores were 96-94, 98-92 and 98-92.
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