WBA middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (31-3-3, 19 KOs) dominated Danny Garcia (37-4, 21 KOs), making the most of his inactivity and lack of measurement to cease him within the ninth spherical within the chief assist bout on Saturday evening on the T-Cell Area in Las Vegas.
Within the final seconds of the ninth, the 41-year-old Cuban Lara reached out and tapped Garcia with a left to the jaw, sending him to the canvas as if he’d been shot. Garcia acquired again up immediately because the spherical ended.
In between rounds, Garcia’s father let the referee, Thomas Taylor, know that they needed the struggle to be stopped. the time of the stoppage was at 3:00 of spherical 9.
“It wasn’t my evening. I attempted to be nice, nevertheless it wasn’t my evening. I had a protracted layoff,” stated Danny Garcia after the struggle.
Garcia seemed like he didn’t need to be there tonight, as a result of he was staying on the skin all the contest, not throwing punches. He was letting Lara peck away with single punches, principally jabs, and attempting to not get hit.
Each fighters landed within the single digits in each spherical, and it was apparent that this was a poor job of matchmaking by the promoters for this occasion. Nearly all the undercard was like this, with the A-side fighters dominating overmatched opposition that didn’t belong inside the identical ring as them.
For probably the most half, the group was affected person and selecting to not boo till the ninth spherical. The 36-year-old former two-division world champion Garcia hadn’t fought in two years, and he’d by no means fought at middleweight earlier than.
As soon as the group began booing, they actually let Danny and Lara know why they considered them. Even after the struggle, the group continued booing when Garcia was being interviewed. They didn’t respect paying cash and taking time to see this sort of efficiency within the chief assist bout.
Lara has all the time been a low output fighter with a Floyd Mayweather Jr. potshot kind of favor, and he’s solely not often had entertaining fights throughout his lengthy profession. That was when he fought oppoisition that attacked him nonstop.
Tonight, Danny Garcia was not the kind of opponent that may carry out one of the best in Lara. PBC ought to have recognized that as a result of Danny has seemed washed up for not less than seven years since his loss to Keith Thurman in 2017.
Garcia didn’t say if he plans on retiring after the struggle, however he ought to take into account it. He doesn’t have sufficient left for him to compete at 154 and positively not 160. The one weight class the place Garcia excelled was at 140, and he hasn’t fought in that weight class in 10 years since 2014. He’s too outdated to return to 140 at this level in his profession.
