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Lara vs Martirosyan II results: Erislandy Lara wins decision to retain WBA title

Erislandy Lara retained his WBA junior middleweight title with a rematch win over Vanes Martirosyan.

Amanda Westcott/SHOWTIME
Scott Christ is the managing editor of Bad Left Hook and has been covering boxing for SB Nation since 2006.

Erislandy Lara had another tough fight with Vanes Martirosyan, but this time they went all 12 rounds and Lara took the win, earning a decision on scores of 115-112, 116-111, and 116-111, retaining his WBA junior middleweight title in the Showtime main event from Las Vegas. BLH had the fight 114-113 for Martirosyan, but we're not arguing that it was a robbery. The scores were all reasonable.

Lara (23-2-2, 13 KO) spent the fight being himself, moving around, doing what he could to make Martirosyan miss, both by slipping shots and blocking with the gloves, but Martirosyan (36-3-1, 21 KO) did some really good work to the body, which may have been largely ignored by the judges, as has been the case over many years, and even just playing devil' advocate, you could certainly argue that Martirosyan's body work never seemed to really slow Lara down, anyway.

Martirosyan gave Lara fits, but the same was true in reverse, too. The fighters make for a really tough style matchup with one another, and if they fought 20 times, they'd have 20 fights that were at times hard to score.

Lara did his best work on offense with his straight left hand, landing it very nicely at times, snapping Martirosyan's head back a few times. Of the eye-catching shots, Lara certainly had more, and was able to land cleaner to the head.

Lara said, through a translator, that he would fight Canelo Alvarez, Gennady Golovkin (not actually mentioned by the translator, but said by Lara), "or anyone" else that wanted to face him.

Martirosyan, of course, felt he'd won the fight, but didn't seem angry about it.

"I was chasing him all night. I thought I did enough to win. That was not a low blow. It is what it is. He's the champion, he always has that edge. I had to do enough to win, and I thought I did," Martirosyan said, adding that he'll fight anyone.

How did you all score the fight?

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