It was announced lats week that Gennadiy Golovkin was not going to face Erislandy Lara, and by default give up his WBA middleweight title in the process. On March 13th, it was announced that the WBA has ordered a middleweight bout for the vacant title between Erislandy Lara and Michael Zerafa, which is set to begin today, March 14th, and conclude by April 13th.
Erislandy Lara is a two-time WBA 154 lbs world champion, who currently holds the WBA regular middleweight title, that is not widely regarded as the world championship. For Lara, this would be a major chance to build-up and potentially further his hall-of-fame resume.
This comes on the heels a rumored WBA middleweight title bout that would be contested at 155 lbs, allegedly, as the rumors were stated that would see Erislandy Lara versus Danny Garcia. The bout felt like a marquee attraction, but also didn’t make sense in a lot of ways, one of which being Garcia had never fought at middleweight and two, the belt would be contested at a catchweight.
“That’s what we want,” said Danny Garcia to YSM Sports Media. “That’s what we want. I want to fight Lara for the middleweight title at 155 [lbs].”
This comes on the heels of the IBF mandating a fight between Esquiva Falcao and Michael Zerafa, for the vacant IBF middleweight title Gennadiy Golovkin also gave up. The craziest part in all of this is the power that Zerafa wields at 160 lbs., as he has the choice of two different middleweight world title fights. Who would have thought. #2 in the WBA rankings behind Zerafa is 40-something former champion, Sergio Martinez, and #3 in the IBF is Vincenzo Gualtieri.
