On March 30th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, WBA middleweight world champion Erislandy Lara will defend his belt against mandatory challenger Michael Zerafa.
Their fight will be part of the first Premier Boxing Champions on Amazon Prime pay-per-view event.
The card will be headlined by a junior middleweight fight between WBO world champion Tim Tszyu and veteran Keith Thurman.
Lara (29-3-3, 17 KOs), who held a world title at 154, moved up to middleweight and captured his WBA title with a first round knockout of Thomas LaManna in May 2021, and retained the belt by stopping Gary O’Sullivan in May 2022.
For much of 2023, there was a talk of a showdown with former champion Danny Garcia, but the contest never came off.
At 40-years-old, Lara has no intention of retiring in the near future.
“I’m looking forward to getting back in the ring and defending my title, especially on this first event with PBC on Prime Video,” said Lara.
“I feel like I’m the modern-day Bernard Hopkins and that I can keep doing this for years. I know that Zerafa has been waiting patiently for this opportunity, so he’s going to be hungry on fight night. But he’s going to realize that he’s now on the world class level facing the best fighter in the division. It’s an honor to be on this great card that’s going to be action packed from start to finish.”
Zerafa (31-4, 19 KOs) has been waiting for his title shot for a long time. He defeated previously unbeaten fighters Danilo Creati and Isaac Hardman in his last two fights.
“This is long overdue ever since I became the mandatory,” said Zerafa. “I’m very thankful to everyone who made this fight happen. Come fight night, the world will see why I deserve this opportunity and Australia will have a new world champion.”