Hurd knocks Lara down, wins exciting fight

boxingnews24.com

By Tim Royner:

Jarett Hurd (22-0, 15 KOs) sent long-time WBA Super World junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (25-3-2, 14 KOs) down to a 12 round unanimous decision defeat in a fight of the year candidate on Saturday night at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The fight was basically knotted going into the 12h round, but IBF World junior middleweight Hurd was able to score a knockdown of Lara to take the victory in their fight televised by Showtime Championship Boxing. Hurd landed a left to the head of Lara that dropped him hard in the final round. The knockdown ultimately was the difference in the fight.

Despite losing, Lara put in one of his most exciting fights of his 10-year pro career with the way he stood and punched with the bigger and more powerful Hurd. However, it’s not as if Lara had any choice in the matter. Hurd, 27, was putting unrelenting pressure on the former Cuban amateur star Lara from the opening bell. In getting beaten, Lara can hold his head high knowing that he put in the most exciting performance of his career. If Lara had fought like this in the last 7 years, he would have a lot more boxing fans than he does now.

It was a different Lara last night compared to the one we’ve seen before. Lara didn’t have a choice though, as Hurd was on top of him all night long, hitting him with heavy shots to the head and body and making him fight for survival. Lara didn’t have good enough wheels to escape the pressure that Hurd was putting on him. Hurd made sure that Lara didn’t have the ability to run from him by focusing his shots downstairs to the body. This is what Alfredo Angulo had done to Lara in their fight in 2013. Angulo took away Lara’s ability to run from him by landing hard body punches at every opportunity. Angulo knew that he was never going to have a chance if he strictly head-hunted for 12 rounds. Angulo still lost the fight to Lara by a 10th round stoppage, but he knocked him down twice.

“I don’t think it had anything to do with age,” Hurd said. “I think it was me and the game plan we had to apply the pressure.”

Lara felt that he’d done enough to deserve the win, but unfortunately the judges didn’t agree with him. They saw how Lara crumbled under the pressure from Hurd in rounds 3 through 12, and they gave it to the busier, stronger and more durable fighter.

The final punch stats showed how much busier Hurd was with his high-volume than Lara. Hurd threw 824 punches, landing 217 for a connect rate of 26%. Lara landed 176 of 572 punches for a 31 percent connect rate, according to CompuBox’s stats.

Behind on the all three of the judges’ scorecards going into round 12, Hurd needed to do something dramatic to pull out the victory. Fortunately for Hurd, he was able to score a knockdown to edge Lara on the scorecards.

A badly fatigued Lara could not weather the storm in the 12th round when Hurd began to unload on him with brutal power shots one after another. These weren’t the same type of punches that Hurd had been throwing earlier in the fight in just trying to connect. Hurd put everything he had in his shots in the 12th, and he never showed any signs of tiring. It was impressive to watch, and it was not surprising that Lara crumbled as the round wore on. Lara initially tried to stand and fight Hurd during the round, but he was exhausted by the midpoint of the round and unable to handle his shots.

The scorecards for the fight are as follows: 114-113, 114-113 Hurd and 114-113 for Lara. There were some rounds that could have gone either way depending on whether one favored Lara’s more accurate shots over the harder and more numerous punches that Hurd was landing. What made it hard to give the win to Lara, 34, was the fact that he was so much smaller and weaker than Hurd. The two fighters looked like they belonged in different divisions. Lara looked like a junior middleweight, whereas Hurd looked like a big middleweight. That was always going to be a problem for Lara to try and deal with the huge size, reach, power and youth advantage that the 27-year-old Hurd had going for him in this fight.

Hurd had done his research studying Lara’s previous fights, noting that he had problems handling constant unrelenting pressure for three minutes of every round.

Hurd will be facing WBC junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo (30-0, 15 KOs) next in a fight later this year. Charlo, 27, wasn’t all that impressed with what he saw from Hurd, pointing out that he has big problems with his lack of defense.

Lara gave it his best shot in trying to match the Hurd’s high work rate, but he couldn’t do it. Lara fought Hurd better than his last two opponents Austin Trout and Tony Harrison, but not much better. Harrison fought Hurd in a close fight until he was stopped in the 9th round last year in February. At the time of the stoppage, Hurd was slightly ahead on the scorecards by the scores 77-75, 77-75 and 76-76. Harrison, 6’1”, landed much harder shots on Hurd than Lara did last night, and it didn’t help him. Hurd still wore Harrison down with his pressure and took him out in the 9th.

”Hurd has to get his defense together, because he cannot get hit by me like that by me,” Charlo said via ESPN.com. ”Lara doesn’t move like he used to. If he moves like he used to, he wins that fight. I’m down. Let’s go. We want that work. I feel Hurd only took the fight with Lara because he realized the harder fight is with Jermell Charlo.”

Like Lara, Charlo doesn’t throw a lot of punches either, and that could be his undoing against Hurd, who has a steel chin. In looking at Charlo’s string of recent wins over marginal opposition, he’s mostly scored knockouts without throwing a lot of shots. Charlo has sprung traps against his opponents and knocked them out suddenly. However, Charlo hasn’t faced a pressure fighter in the class of Hurd during his recent 4-fight string of knockouts that he’s accumulated against Erickson Lubin, Charles Hatley, John Jackson and Joachim Alcine.

Charlo is still essentially the same flawed fighter that won a controversial 10 round unanimous decision win over Vanes Martirosyan in March 2015. Charlo deserved to lose that fight by at least two rounds, but the judges were very kind to the up and coming fighter at the time. The thing to note about Charlo’s performance against Martirosyan was how stressed out he became once he started getting hit a lot by heavy shots. Charlo looked like he came unglued, and he ended up running from Martirosyan and looking really bad. Charlo is not capable of throwing a lot of punches, and he looked stressed when he gets hit. Against Hurd, Charlo is likely to fall apart and wind up running and losing badly.

If Charlo stands and fights, he’ll surely get knocked out, because he’s not going to be able to score a one-punch knockout like he did against Lubin. Hurd can take heavy shots all night long, and fire back a lot more shots. Charlo doesn’t like getting hit, and he’s incapable of throwing more than a small handful of punches each round. The most likely scenario is Charlo will run from Hurd for 12 rounds and fight the way that most boxing fans had predicted Lara was going to fight him by running. If Charlo fights like that against Hurd, he’ll not only lose the fight, but he’ll lose a massive amount of boxing fans in the process. With the people that are going to be watching the Charlo-Hurd fight on Showtime Boxing, Charlo needs to stand and fight Hurd the way Lara did and be ready to go down with the ship. If Charlo doesn’t have the chin, power or the work rate needed to get the job done against Hurd, then so be it.