Leigh Wood Wants A Fall Bout With Mauricio Lara
In his last prizefight, regular WBA featherweight “Leigh-thal” Leigh Wood (26-2, 16 KO’s) secured probably the most visible win of his career. In that bout, Wood knocked out the heavily endorsed Olympian Michael Conlan in his first title defense. Not only did he stop Conlan, he violently ejected him from the ring in extremely dramatic fashion.
This was certainly a great win, even more so considering just two fights prior, Leigh-thal dropped a majority decision loss to James Dickens. In his first match after the Dickens dust-up, Wood toppled Can Xu in an upset to capture the WBA regular strap. Naturally, Wood wants to continue his positive momentum by penning a meaningful fight for the fall.
BRING ME THE THOROUGHBRED
If given his way the WBA champion would waste no time signing on the dotted line to go to war with #3 (WBO/IBF) ranked Mexican fighter Mauricio “Bronco” Lara (24-2-1, 17 KO’s). At the moment, Bronco is coming off a third round knockout victory over Emilio Sanchez. This was a solid win to bounce back from his technical draw against Josh Warrington in their immediate rematch in September 2021.
In their original match in February 2021, Lara stopped the IBF featherweight champion in the ninth round. Therefore, it should be no surprise why Wood would want to dance with the gritty boxer while riding his own good wave.
“I’d like to keep busy in the meantime. I’ve been offered a few “tickers” of fights, but I said, ‘you know what? I want to test myself, I want to be in a proper fight.’ [So] I’ve asked for [Mauricio] Lara and that’s as far as I’ve got!
“I’m waiting for financials to work out and hopefully we can announce something soon.”
By: Bakari Simpson
