By Elisinio Castillo

WBA/IBO junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara has fired back at promoters Eric Gomez of Golden Boy Promotions and Camille Estephan of Eye of The Tiger Management, for being critical of his fighting style when discussing last Saturday's fight between WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (26-0, 12 KOs) and David Lemieux.

Saunders traveled over to Canada and dominated Lemieux over twelve rounds to a unanimous decision win.

The British boxer used a lot of movement in the contest to hit and not get hit, while Lemieux gave chase, round after round, with very little success.

Both Gomez and Estephan, who co-promote Lemieux, felt Saunders' fighting style was very similar Lara (25-2-2, 14 KOs) - citing the Cuban boxer's close points loss to Mexican superstar Saul "Canelo" Alvarez in 2014.

"We already knew [Saunders] was a good fighter but what surprised us is how much he runs. He does not allow himself to fight, he starts running, it's a very annoying style. Canelo already fought with a similar style with Erislandy Lara and he got through it. So having said that, we're going to keep the focus on the tiebreaker [with Golovkin]," Gomez said to ESPN Deportes.

And for his part, Estephan said to La Presse - "HBO is always behind us at 100%. They realized very quickly that the guy [Saunders], without taking away any credit, did not want to fight. Erislandy Lara did that [exact fight strategy] against Canelo [in 2014] and we never saw him on [HBO's] airwaves again. And yet Canelo had beaten him by a single thread. [The people at HBO], they are looking for action, entertainment. We are already in discussion with HBO. We're going to let the holiday season pass, we'll see what happens with his shoulder, but I'm sure his next fight will be on HBO."

Lara has been reading the press clippings and issued a response to both executives.

"They are just mad. I embarrassed Canelo and Saunders did the same to Lemiuex. At the end of day, I beat Canelo and he beat Lemieux and we'll both beat GGG. This is boxing, every fighter uses their advantages to win fights - and very few guys have master boxing skills. The funniest part of that fight, was [Conor] McGregor looked more like a boxer than Lemieux on Saturday night," Lara stated to BoxingScene.com.