The undercard for the September 14 Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Edgar Berlanga pay-per-view at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas has reportedly been set– and, well, beauty will be in the eye of the beholder.
Already confirmed to be on the bill was a middleweight title contest between Cuba’s Erislandy Lara (30-3-3, 18 KOs) and Philadelphia’s Danny Garcia (37-3, 21 KOs) for Lara’s WBA 160 lb. title.
Garcia, 36, is a former junior welterweight and welterweight world champ who has yet to compete as a middleweight. He’ll be coming into this contest having just one bout since he dropped a decision to Errol Spence in December of 2020. He last fought in July of 2022, when he scored a majority decision over Jose Benavidez Jr.
The 40-year-old Lara, meanwhile, fought this past March, crushing an overmatched Michael Zerafa in three rounds. Before that, however, the former junior middleweight champ hadn’t fought in nearly two years. This will be the third defense of his WBA title.
The new additions to the Mexican Independence Day weekend show are predictably underwhelming for a card where the purse of the main event A-side takes up much of the event budget.
Caleb “Sweethands” Plant (22-2, 13 KOs) will take on Trevor McCumby (28-0, 21 KOs) for the vacant WBA interim super middleweight title. Plant is a former IBF world champ at 168, who lost his belt to Canelo via eleventh-round TKO back in 2021 and, most recently, took a beating in a decisive points loss to David Benavidez in March of 2023. McCumby is a one-time top prospect, three fights back into a career that was put on pause for five years due to a PEDs suspension and a subsequent ACL injury. The bout was originally scheduled for August 17, but was pushed back a month after McCumby reportedly suffered a cut in training.
Also on the card, Rolly Romero (15-2, 13 KOs) returns to the ring six months after being completely dismantled at the hands of Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz in March for his WBA junior welterweight title. The TKO 8 loss capped off an exceptionally shaky main stage run that saw him knocked out in five rounds by Gervonta Davis in May of 2022 and win the WBA belt via controversial quick-stoppage against Ismael Barroso in May of 2023. Romero will be taking on Californian Manuel Jaimes (16-1-1, 13 KOs), who will be competing in his first ten-rounder. The biggest name on Jaimes’ resume is, arguably, Moises Flores. Romero is so bad that Jaimes still has a fair shot at winning.
In the main event of the Prime Video free preview broadcast, yet another non-Mexican will be in action in this Mexican Independence Day event as former super bantamweight champ Stephen Fulton (21-1, 8 KOs), semi-fresh off a brutal dissecting by Japan’s Naoya Inoue, returns to the ring for the first time in over a year, making his featherweight debut against an actual Mexican (!), Carlos Castro (30-2, 14 KOs). Castro is best known for back-to-back losses to Luis Nery and Brandon Figueroa in 2022.
Paul Magno has over forty years of experience in and around the sport of boxing and has had his hand in everything from officiating to training. As a writer, his work has appeared on Yahoo Sports, Fox Sports, Fight Hype, Max Boxing, Boxing.com, Inside Fights, The Queensberry Rules, Overtime Heroics, Bleacher Report, and Premier Boxing Champions. He is currently the owner and managing editor or The Boxing Tribune. You can follow his Twitter/X account, @boxing_tribune, for breaking boxing news, analysis, and sometimes NSFW commentary. For Advertising, Inquiries, etc., send him an email here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com