Josh Warrington who was widely regarded as the number one featherweight in the world lost in a major upset to relatively unknown Mauricio Lara. Coming into the fight people knew Lara could punch but he’d only faced domestic fighters in Mexico for the main part and at least in my eyes didn’t have the experience or skills to compete at world level.
I underestimated Lara who clearly punches extremely hard and like I stated in my preview has an iron chin. I still think versus a good stick and move boxer he would struggle but I forgot that styles make fights and Lara’s style completely counteracts Warrington’s. Lara is a come forward fighter with power and a great chin which means that when Warrington tries his usual style of coming forward while throwing huge amounts of punches he gets caught by the bigger puncher and also can’t hurt Lara because of his iron chin combined with Warrington not being a puncher. Warrington might have been able to out box Lara if he tried but I still think he would have struggled badly as that’s just not his style and Lara would still land the bigger punches.
While hindsight is a great thing and no one could have really predicted this outcome it has made me remember that every fight involves two fighters that could beat each other no matter how unlikely it is. The more you watch boxing the less some fights get interesting or seem risky just because in our heads we see the favorite as already having won and we are just waiting too see the manner of their victory. It also showed me how important styles are in fights and how matchmaking is a thankless job. In this case the matchmaker probably saw a Mexican with a padded record that Warrington could look good against while being entertaining and didn’t think if the guy had actual power or that this fight didn’t matter all that much because it was all about the big fights for Warrington next. That has gone out the window now and it’ll take a little while to rebuild as he has no world title and the featherweight division has changed with him losing so none of the big names will likely have any motivation to fight him beyond a pay day which they didn’t seem keen on before he lost. It was also a brutal knockout and you don’t know if he’ll be the same fighter now. Even if he is the same fighter a major vulnerability of him not being able to reliably hurt opponents at world level will likely see him fall short against the other champions.
Boxing Fulcrum 