By Dan Ambrose: WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin (30-0, 22 KO’s) will be continuing with his habit of defending his title against weak opposition when he faces #2 WBO Lukas Konecny (50-4, 23 KO’s) on the undercard of the Bernard Hopkins vs. Beibut Shumenov card on Showtime on April 19th at the DC Armory, Washington, District of Columbia, USA. Quillin has been a disappointment in the eyes of some boxing fans due to him not facing WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, who has shown a lot of interest in facing him.
Instead of agreeing to fight Golovkin, Quillin has beaten Fernando Guerrero and Gabriel Rosado. The way that Quillin performed in the Rosado fight, it’s probably a good idea that he’s not agreed to fight Golovkin, because he’d likely get knocked out within 6 rounds by Golovkin.
The Konecny has spent most of his career fighting at 154 against largely weak opposition. He’s built up a fine looking record, but the problem is the wins have come against weak opponents. In his 13-year pro career, Konecny has fought exactly four decent fighters in Zaurbek Baysangurov, Serhiy Dzinziruk, Michele Piccirillo and Ruben Varon, but he’s lost to all four of them. These are far from great fighters, yet they were all able to defeat Konecny.
What’s disappointing is that the World Boxing Organization has given Konecny a high No.2 ranking based on wins over opposition like Moez Fhima, Karim Achour, Salim Larbi, Hussein Bayram, and Hamlet Petrosyan in the last four years. Those aren’t good enough opponents for him to get that kind of ranking, which is probably why none of the other ranking organizations have him ranked in their top 15. The WBO has a lot of fighters ranked in their top 5 in different divisions that seem more like 2nd tier guys than true upper level fighters.
Quillin looked pretty shaken up in his last fight after getting staggered by Rosado late in the fight. Luckily for Quillin, the fight was halted in the 10th due to a cut that Rosado had suffered in the 9th round. At the time of the stoppage, Rosado had Quillin looking plenty worried from the pressure that he was putting on him.
Hopefully Quillin faces a good opponent one of these days because he’s coming the middleweight division’s version of Robert Stieglitz, the WBO super middleweight champion, who has become known for facing a lot of little known opposition in his many years as the WBO 168 lb champion. Quillin should be facing the likes of Daniel Geale, Felix Sturm, Martin Murray, Golovkin, Sergio Martinez and Brian Vera.
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