Lara, NAC wants answers from judge in Alvarez fight
An angry and frustrated Erislandy Lara stood at the podium at the post-fight news conference late Saturday at the MGM Grand. He was seething and the usual smile had been replaced by a grimace.
Lara had just lost a tough 12-round split decision to Canelo Alvarez in their junior middleweight fight in the Grand Garden. He wanted to know how judge Levi Martinez could give Alvarez the fight by a 117-111 margin while the other two judges — Las Vegas’ Dave Moretti and Jerry Roth — had the fight 115-113 (Roth had Lara winning, Moretti had Alvarez ahead). He also wanted an immediate rematch come November.
But there would be no satisfactory answers for the Cuban-American who at least still holds the World Boxing Association belt, which was not at stake Saturday. But that was small consolation. He was demanding justice.
“It’s disgraceful what they did to me,” Lara said. “I want the judge to explain to me how Canelo won 9-3. Everyone knows he lost. Something has to be done or this sport’s not going to make it.”
The Nevada Athletic Commission also wanted to know what Martinez was thinking. The veteran judge from Las Cruces, N.M., had four rounds of his scorecard (rounds one, two, six and 12) in direct conflict with the other two judges and that raised a red flag with the NAC.
“Mr. Martinez is an experienced judge who has worked many big fights,” said Bob Bennett, the commission’s executive director and a former fight judge. “Unfortunately, he was out of the majority approximately 33 percent of the time and we are going to review the tape and talk to Mr. Martinez further about it.”
NAC chairman Francisco Aguilar said: “Obviously when a third of the rounds are out of sync, that is a concern. So we’re going to go back and look at the film, see what was going on and have our decision.”
Aguilar said the commission does bear some responsibility since it vetted and selected Martinez. Bennett also noted that Martinez’s name was not objected to by either camp when it came up for consideration last month at the meeting to select the officials for Saturday’s fight.
The likelihood is it will probably be a while before Martinez works another big fight in Las Vegas. But that would be of little solace to Lara and his team. Lara’s trainer Ronnie Shields said when he heard the 117-111 score, he thought his guy had won.
“I said, ‘OK, they got it right,’ ” Shields said. “There’s no way in my mind that judge could have given a 117-111 score to Canelo. No way.”
From Alvarez’s perspective, he was angry with Roth for giving the fight to Lara, who Alvarez chased all over the ring for the better part of the 12 rounds.
“They say to make love you need a partner and in boxing, you need a partner,” Alvarez said. “I didn’t have a partner (Saturday). I had a guy who ran.
“We knew it would be a tough fight, but we didn’t think we’d be running in a marathon. He said he was going to take me to the Cuban school of boxing. Well I don’t think anyone wants to go to that school.”
Still, Lara was demanding another shot at Alvarez. But that’s not likely to happen. Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya, who promotes Alvarez, said that Lara would have to wait at the back of the line behind the likes of Miguel Cotto, Gennady Golovkin, James Kirkland and others.
“From what I heard, nobody wants a rematch,” De La Hoya said with Lara and his team alongside him. “There’s 10 guys in line who want to fight Canelo. Lara lost. He has to go wait at the end of the line. That’s how this works. Canelo won (Saturday) and now we have to move on.”
Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal or 702-387-2913. Follow him on Twitter: @stevecarprj.