WBA middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (31-3-3, 19 KOs) dominated Danny Garcia (37-4, 21 KOs), taking advantage of his inactivity and lack of size to stop him in the ninth round in the head support on Saturday. night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
In the final seconds of the ninth, the 41-year-old Cuban Lara reached out and hit Garcia with a left to the jaw, sending him to the canvas as if he had been shot. Garcia got right back up at the end of the round.
In between rounds, Garcia’s father informed the referee, Thomas Taylor, that they wanted the fight stopped. stoppage time was at 3:00 of round nine.
“It wasn’t my night. I tried to be great, but it wasn’t my night. I had a long layoff,” Danny Garcia said after the fight.
Garcia looked like he didn’t want to be there tonight, as he stayed on the outside the entire contest, not throwing punches. He was letting Lara peck with single punches, mostly jabs, and trying not to get hit.
Both fighters landed in the single digits in each round, and it was obvious that this was a poor matchmaking job by the promoters for this event. Pretty much the entire undercard was like this, with the A-side fighters dominating overmatched opposition that didn’t belong in the same ring as them.
For the most part, the crowd was patient and chose not to choke until the ninth round. The 36-year-old former two-division world champion Garcia had not fought in two years, and had never fought at middleweight before.
Once the crowd started to thin out, they really let Danny and Lara know why they thought of them. Even after the fight, the crowd continued to boo when Garcia was being interviewed. They didn’t appreciate paying money and taking the time to see this kind of performance in the head support battle.
Lara has always been a low-production fighter with a Floyd Mayweather Jr.-style style, and has rarely had entertaining fights during his long career. It was then that he fought against the opposition who attacked him relentlessly.
Tonight, Danny Garcia was not the type of opponent that would get the best of Lara. PBC should know that, because Danny has looked washed up for at least seven years since his loss to Keith Thurman in 2017.
Garcia has not said if he plans to retire after the fight, but he should consider it. He doesn’t have enough for him to compete at 154 and certainly not 160. The only weight class where Garcia excelled was at 140, and he hasn’t fought in that weight class in 10 years since 2014. He’s too old to come back . at 140 at this point in his career.
