Zhanibek Alimkhanuly vs. Erislandy Lara Santoya

Nearly finalized now for the Cruz vs. Roach undercard (yes, a middleweight championship unification is being put subordinate on the bill to a ten-rounder...I'll spare you my usual rant...) - December 6th at the Frost Bank Arena in San Antonio.

This will be Lara's second defense of the full WBA middleweight title (and fourth defense if you include his capture and single defense of of the "regular" belt prior to his promotion in 2023...he is technically on a 4-0 run in WBA championship bouts at middleweight: Thomas "Cornflake" LaManna, Gary "Spike" O'Sullivan, Michael "Pretty Boy" Zerafa, and Danny "Swift" García). On the line will also be the IBF & WBO middleweight titles, in Alimkhanuly's third & fourth defense respectively.

For the 42 year old Cuban, it will be his first time in the ring in just over 12½ months. For his Kazakhstani fellow southpaw champion, a decade his junior, it will be his third match in the same time span - but Alimkhanuly did have a full year layoff of his own before that October 2023 until October 2024).

Lara gives up 2½″ of height. Alimkhanuly gives up 3½″ of reach.

There was long speculation that Alkimhanuly was eyeing a unification bout with Carlos Adames, the holder of the green belt. Alimkhanuly has been making cryptic posts on social media for the last month hyping up his next big fight announcement, but made clear at one point that it would not be with the Dominican - stating the WBC titlist was ducking him. That pretty much narrowed a "big fight announcement" down to Lara, or Alikhanuly's nebulously not-quite-retired countryman Gennady Golovkin.

 

Went looking to see if there were any betting lines yet and found this quote from somebody on B-Scene:

"This is a 60-40 fight in favor of Janibek. Can't wait to see the odds..."

 

Should be an interesting match up. Could Janibek be the guy to actually convincingly beat Lara with no controversy, perhaps even stop him? Or does Lara still have enough tricks to cause Janibek some real problems and maybe even win on points?

 

You think he can become the first to stop him?

I ordinarily wouldn't be sure of Alimkhanuly getting the job done but Lara being 42 and out for a year does make it feel a little more plausible.

 

Lara´s middleweight reign has been one of the biggest manufactured BS in boxing´s history, and no one ever talks about it.

 

You mean you don't think Cornflake/Spike/Pretty Boy isn't a good run against middleweights? Or would it be the more the fact that his biggest name MW opponent is DSG whose prime was at super lightweight?

 

I could rant for days!

 

Lol, when you see hes signed to fight Janibek, the first thought is: Man, Lara staying around the top for so long is impressive!

Then you remember his “at the top” has been against Cornflake and a past it welterweight.

 

Had every chance to face GGG as well but that didn't come through sadly. Maybe fighting Janibek will finally make up for it and fill that void.

 

When it comes to Lara you're most likely not going to get a watchable fight other than few occasions where he was in an entertaining fight but that's mostly helped with the other fighters who force Lara to fight. Sadly I don't think Janibek has the right style to make it exciting and it could very well end up being a dull fight. We'll most likely see a slow paced measured approach from both fighters. The only thing that might make it exciting is if Janibek manages to land something big and hurt Lara bad.

 

"Ahhh, ya faced one Kazakh middleweight, you've faced 'em all..."

 

His entire career post Alvarez has been mainly cherry picks. Heck, his only legit world class fights after that were against Hurd and Castano, after which he started cherry picking even harder.
And what was infuriating for a while, was that some fans ate up his "Golovkin is ducking me!" nonsense.

Complete waste of time. He has genuinely been more of a net negative on the sport than a positive. We would have been better off if he never turned pro.