In an impressive performance, WBA 154 pound champion Erislandy Lara (20-2-2, 12 KOs) put on a boxing clinic in defeating grizzled veteran Ishe Smith (26-7, 12 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision tonight to retain his WBA title at the Illusions Theater at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
Smith, 36, tried his best, but Lara picked him apart with left hand pot shots in the center of the ring from rounds 2 through 12. Smith had his moments in rounds 1, 7 and 11, but that was the extent of it. He simply was no match for the faster, cleaner landing Lara while the two were in the center of the ring. Smith did well when he was able to trap Lara against the ropes and land body shots.
You can make a strong argument that Smith did a better job against Lara than Saul “Canelo” Alvarez did. Lara lost to Canelo by a controversial decision earlier this year in July, but a lot of boxing fans saw Lara winning that fight against the highly popular red-headed Canelo.
The final judges’ scores for tonight’s Lara-Smith fight were 119-109, 119-109 and 117-111. Smith wasn’t too pleased with the 119-109 scores because he saw those as being too wide, but there’s no questions that Lara won the fight by a fairly wide score due to his excellent defense, high connect percentage and accurate pot shots.
“I want to fight Floyd Mayweather. He’s one of the best,” Lara said after the fight.
In the co-feature bout, super middleweight contender Badou Jack (18-1, 11 KOs) defeated Francisco Siera (26-8-1, 23 KOs) by a 6th round knockout. Jack finished off an overmatched Sierrera in the 6th. The fight was halted at 1:58 of the round.
Other action on the card:
Christopher Pearson UD 10 Steve Martinez
Ashley Theophane UD 10 Miguel Zuniga
Ronald Gavril KO 1 Jose Miguel Rodriguez Berrio
Andrew Tabiti KO 1 Ernest Reyna
Lanell Bellows TKO 3 Rahman Mustafa Yusubov
Ladarius Miller UD 4 James Burns