Erislandy Lara's Team Considering Name Options at 154 or Jump to 160

Erislandy Lara's manager Luis DeCubas says he's disappointed that Vanes Martirosyan balked at fighting the Cuban in a WBC eliminator, but that they're trying to figure out their next step on and won't dwell on what isn't going to happen.

From BoxingScene.com:

"We've thought about a Paul Williams rematch because this is a very interesting fight and many fans want to see it. Also, we have evaluated fights against other opponents - like Carlos Quintana, who last Saturday knocked out Deandre Latimore in six rounds. Another possibility is Anthony Mundine."

Lara (16-1-1, 11 KO) is coming off of a 94-second destruction of Ronald Hearns on April 20, in a fight Showtime for some reason just had to buy despite the obvious mismatch, and two of these three sound like good next steps. Obviously a lot of boxing fans do want to see the Williams rematch, and you can count me in on that one. I'd also be quite happy to see Quintana get a shot at Lara after he blew Deandre Latimore out of the water in an alleged "upset" on the Mayweather-Cotto card.

As for Anthony Mundine, I wish people would stop bringing him up. He's not going to fight Erislandy Lara. Anyone who thinks that's even a possibility is either wishing on a star (for some reason, since Mundine is not in Lara's league, period), or they've bought into Mundine's self-promotion and ignored things like facts.

In fact, Aus-Boxing reported this morning that Mundine has been stripped of the ridiculous interim WBA belt he'd been carrying around for a while now, since he's clearly not going to fight Austin Trout, who holds the regular title. Floyd Mayweather now holds the super title, which brings into question exactly why in God's name there was an interim title in the first place, but apparently the WBA also went along with Mundine's act for a while and apparently assumed he was actually going to fight someone good instead of Xavier Toliver, Garth Wood, and Rigoberto Alvarez, the man he beat for the interim belt, which was vacant, and was also the man beaten by Trout for the regular belt. You can see how this all makes so much goddamned sense, I'm sure.

DeCubas also says there's a chance they might just go up to middleweight and forget about the 154-pound scene, because as we all know, middleweight is where tough challenges are routinely accepted, and not Gennady Golovkin vs Lajuan Simon and Dmitry Pirog vs Nobuhiro Ishida. Hell, maybe Sergio will fight him -- that would be a very interesting fight on paper, I believe, so long as Lara can handle 160.