Mauricio Lara comes in heavy, stripped of WBA featherweight title

Mauricio Lara’s WBA featherweight title reign is over without a defense. “Bronco” came in to the Wednesday check-in that, for the sake of avoiding an unsafe last-minute weight cut, the BBBofC refused to let him hit the scales today below 128.5 pounds. Lara ultimately weighed in today at 129.8, nearly a full four pounds over the limit.

The fight is still on at time of writing. Lara (26-2-1, 19 KO) has officially been stripped of his belt, though Leigh Wood (26-3, 16 KO) is still eligible to reclaim it.

There are so, so many things to say about the BBBofC that we couldn’t print on our family-friendly website, but credit where it’s due: they take safe weight cuts seriously. John Riel Casimero notably lost his WBO bantamweight belt on English soil after illegally using a sauna to squeeze out the last few pounds ahead of his fight with Paul Butler. We’re not privy to Lara’s Wednesday weight, but going by his size today, I can believe that this was the right call.