Erislandy Lara agrees to face Jarrett Hurd

Boxingnews24.com

By Dan Ambrose:

WBA Super World junior middleweight champion Erislandy “The American Dream’ Lara (25-2-2, 14 KOs) has agreed to meet unbeaten IBF World 154lb champion Jarrett Hurd (21-0, 15 KOs) in a unification match. Now it’s up to the management for the 2 fighters to see if they can put the fight together.

The Lara vs. Hurd fight has been talked about for Showtime ever since the 2 junior middleweight champions won their last fights on the same card on October 14 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The 34-year-old Lara successfully defended his WBA Super World light middleweight title in beating previously undefeated Terrell Gausha by a 12 round unanimous decision.

For his part, Hurd used his size, youth and power to stop former WBA 154 lb. champion Austin ‘No Doubt’ Trout (30-4, 17 KOs) in the 10th round. Hurd took Trout’s best shots in the first 6 rounds, and then walked him down in the second half of the fight to force the stoppage. It didn’t look particularly skillful on Hurd’s part in breaking down Trout. It was more of a case of the 6’1” Hurd using his size and youth to wear Trout down slowly before stopping him.

”No more begging you got it! Careful what you wish for! Don’t forget I pushed for this fight 💯🥊: said Lara on his social media site.

The 27-year-old Hurd had this to say in response:

”Cool. No more talking, let’s make it happen! ⚡️”

Lara is harder to hit than Trout. It’s going to be a lot more difficult for Hurd to walk down Lara, but it’s not impossible though. We saw how Saul Canelo Alvarez and Alfredo Angulo were both able to use heavy pressure to give Lara a lot of problems. Canelo beat Lara by a 12 round split decision in 2014. Angulo dropped Lara with body shots in rounds 4 and 9. That’s the way to beat Lara by hitting him to the body, because he’s very hard to hit with head shots. Canelo focused all of his attention to hitting Lara to the body. In fact, Canelo only landed 31 head shots in the entire 12 round fight against him.

This will be the toughest fight for the former Cuban amateur star Lara since his loss to Canelo Alvarez in 2014. Lara has been facing weaker opposition lately.

In Lara’s fights since the loss to Canelo, he’s beaten these guys:

• Terrell Gausha

• Yuri Foreman

• Vanes Martirosyan

• Jan Zaveck

• Delvin Rodriguez

• Ishe Smith

Gausha and Martirosyan are decent fighters, but they’re a long ways from being on the same level as the Charlo brothers and Hurd. Those are who Lara should have been fighting a long time ago.

For the sake of boxing, hopefully Lara doesn’t run from Hurd for 12 rounds. Hurd has heavy hands, and it’s not likely that Lara is going to want to stand in front of him and slug. Once Lara is hit hard for the first time by Hurd, he may elect to get on his bike and pedal away for the remainder of the fight.