By Dan Ambrose: John Molina (27-4, 22 KO’s) isn’t satisfied that he fought a good fight in losing to Lucas Matthysse (35-3, 33 KO’s) by an exciting 11th round TKO last Saturday night in Carson, California; Molina says he wants a rematch with the 31-year-old Matthysse to see if he can improve upon his performance.
“I thought we had him hurt a couple of times,” Molina said. “He’s a great fighter. I would love to fight him again. I’m think I’m getting better. His power is pretty good. I think 140 is my weight now.”
Molina does belong at light welterweight, and it’s kind of baffling that he waited 8 years to make this move, because he stopped being effective in the 135lb division at least two years ago. Molina was a good lightweight until 2012 when he started getting beaten. That was a good sign that he didn’t belong in that weight class anymore, especially with him being 5’10” and looking like a welterweight. Molina could probably move up to the welterweight division and be even better than he is at 140, because he weighed in as a junior middleweight last Saturday night against Matthysse. If Molina is ballooning up to junior middleweight after he rehydrate then that tells me that he simply doesn’t belong in the 135 or even the 140lb division.
As far as Molina facing Matthysse again, I think that’s a really bad idea. Molina took a real pounding in that fight, and he really got it bad in the second half of the fight when Matthysse figured out how to avoid his big looping shots. Even in the rounds that Molina knocked Matthysse down, Molina was still taking a lot of head shots. I think it would be a really bad idea for Molina to go into another grueling fight against Matthysse.
Molina’s trainer needs to teach him how to throw a jab, because he wasn’t throwing jabs at all last Saturday and he should have been. With Molina’s long arms, he could have kept Matthysse on the outside if he had been able to jab him instead of just looking to land big shots all the time. If Molina could use his jab at least part of the time, he’d be a lot better fighter because he could control the attacks of his opponents and ultimately take less punishment.
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