By Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions says he’s going to try and put together a unification fight between WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (29-0, 17 KOs) and IBF 147lb title holder Lamont Peterson (33-2-1, 17 KOs) for early 2015.
This is a fight that should have been made in 2014, but instead Garcia’s adviser Al Haymon matched him against the much smaller lightweight Rod Salka in a fight that turned out to be a dreadful mismatch last August.
Showtime was willing to televise the mismatch instead of pulling the rug out from under the fight by saying no to it, which is what they should have done in order to spare the fans such a poor fight.
“I will push for Garcia vs. Peterson for the first quarter of the year,” De La Hoya said to RingTV.com/. “[It’s] the next fight that I want to make.”
That’s nice to know. I’m sure this is a big relief for boxing fans that they don’t have to watch Garcia fight another showcase/tune-up fight against another smaller fighter without any punching power. The WBA and WBC refused to sanction the Garcia-Salka fight, as they must have known that it was going to be a massacre given Salka’s lack of size, power and experience against quality fighters.
The Garcia-Peterson fight is a decent one but hardly a great fight. A rematch between Garcia and Lucas Matthysse would likely be a bigger fight, but Garcia has shown no interest in facing Matthysse again after clinching and low blowing his way to a 12 round decision over the Argentinian fighter in 2013. Garcia vs. Ruslan Provodnikov, Adrien Broner or Terence Crawford would also likely be a bigger fight than the Garcia vs. Peterson fight.
The thing that keeps some fans from getting really excited about watching Danny Garcia fight Lamont Peterson is the fact that Matthysse destroyed Peterson in just three rounds in May of 2013. It’s hard for these fans to get excited about seeing Garcia fight one of Matthysse’s leftovers instead of Garcia going back and fighting Matthysse again.
Garcia has talked in the past about wanting to move up to welterweight to compete against the best fighters in that weight class. However, it looks like he’s undecided because he’s not making the move and because of that he could miss out on a big money fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. It’s hard to understand why Garcia wouldn’t want to move up to 147 unless he’s got some reservations about competing with the likes of Mayweather, Keith Thurman, and Kell Brook.
You can’t really add Manny Pacquiao’s name to the list because Garcia is advised by Al Haymon and Pacquiao promoted by Top Rank. That combination makes it difficult to see Garcia ever facing Pacquiao, even though Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach says he’d love to see Pacquiao fight Garcia.
If Garcia stays at 140, then he’ll need to face his WBC mandatory challenger Viktor Postol in 2015. Garcia got permission to bypass the Postol fight in order to face another opponent, presumably Peterson. I doubt the WBC will let Garcia bypass the Postol fight again after he faces Peterson or whoever.
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