In what was the best fight of the night Erislandy Lara (18-1-2, 12) became the WBA "interim" Light Middleweight title as he stopped Mexican Alfredo Angulo (22-3, 18).
The opening round was sensational for Lara as the Cuban showed off his excellent boxing ability and landed a huge number of massive straight lefts, several of which seemed to rock Angulo to his boots. Lara's boxing seemed to also do enough to claim a second round, though Angulo was starting to get in to range and tag the Cuban's body.
Angulo's body work seemed to start to pay off in round 3 as he claimed his first round and really started to go to work on Lara's midsection with powerful blows all thrown with bad intentions. It appeared the body shots were thrown with the intention of slowing Lara's legs down as much as anything else and keep the often elusive Cuban in the same place for more than just a few moments.
The determined body work of "El Perro" really helped the Mexican in round 4 as he dropped Lara for the first time in Lara's career.
Despite being knocked down Lara got back to his feet an actually looked much crisper the in the few proceeding rounds as he moved excellently and showed off his amazing boxing ability, making Angulo look slow and foolish. Despite moving well however Lara was expanding huge amounts of energy in an attempt to keep Angulo away from him as the Mexican stalked continually.
Angulo would drop Lara for a second time in round 9. It appeared that if a stoppage was going to be caused it would be from Angulo.
Unexpectedly in round 10 Lara landed 2 big left hands that forced Angulo to turn his back and walk away with left eye massively swollen and badly disfigured. The fact that Angulo turned his back forced the referee's hand as he declared Lara the winner, and new champion by 10th round TKO.
Whilst some maybe writing Angulo off following this loss the injury really did seem like a freak incident and shouldn't leave anyone questioning Angulo's heart. Instead those fans should be wishing Angulo a swift recovery as this could be a career threatening injury. For Lara this result certainly puts him into the mix at the world stage.
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