Quote Originally Posted by ruthless rocco View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Gandalf View Post
Sure, it isn't fun to watch, but if boxing is about hit and not be hit, then Lara did a better job than Canelo. It's not my idea of a fun time at all, but that's where the man who wins the fight then goes on to find that he can never really build a fan base. That is then about commerce. You deserve to win the fight as you technically did, but the fans will then respond by saying 'You don't deserve my support as you didn't give me what I want'. My point is simply that you cannot penalise the fighter for not being fan friendly in that particular fight. There is no scoring criteria for being 'fun'. Let the market dictate what happens to the fighter, but don't ever take away a fighters win as he was simply doing what he could to win and wasn't cheating or breaking the rules.
Can a judge simply not interpret all this "not fan friendly behaviour"(as you call it), as a reluctance to fight while the other fighter is trying very hard to engage in a fight? What Chris Algieri did was far more skilled compared to what we saw Lara doing. He avoided being hit and hit in return. Algieri scored 83 more punches than Provodnikov. This shows that both his defense as well as offense were very effective. Lara out landed Canelo by 10 punches. Clearly Lara did more running to avoid Canelo and had less effective defensive aggression....which is the hit and not get hit comes from.
There are no rules saying that you need to stand in front of your opponent, so whilst you might want to penalise for negative behaviour, you shouldn't as it is a legal strategy, and as long as you are outlanding your opponent and landing at a greater connection rate, then you are winning the fight. Lara did what he was supposed to do which was hit and not get hit and overall, he was more successful at this than Canelo.

Having said that, I don't enjoy watching that kind of style a great deal, but if you are a come forward fighter then it is your duty to cut that ring off and make sure you outland your opponent, but Canelo couldn't. It is your job to take the fight away from your opponent and stop him doing what he wants. Canelo did that reasonably in the middle rounds, but that was it. If Canelo was better then Lara wouldn't have been allowed to breath and outland him.