Danny Garcia says he’ll be moving up to 147, Lamont Peterson wants rematch

By Boxing News - 04/12/2015 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: Lamont Peterson (33-3-1, 17 KOs) lost his IBF light welterweight title last Saturday night in his narrow 12 round majority decision defeat in front of 12,300 fans to WBA/WBC 140lb champion Danny Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs) in their catch-weight fight at 143 pounds at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

The International Boxing Federation said that Peterson’s IBF title would be on the line, not to be won, against Garcia, but to be lost if he was beaten. Peterson now wants a rematch against Garcia, but for that to happen he’s going to need to move up to 147 because that’s where Garcia is heading.

The fight was televised by Premier Boxing Champions on NBC.

“Garcia said after fight he will probably go up to 147 for his next fight. Peterson said he’d strongly consider it. Garcia-Peterson #boxing.” Dan Rafael said on his twitter.

If a second fight between Garcia and Peterson is going to take place, it’s going to require that Peterson follow Garcia up to 147, because that could be used an excuse not to take the fight against him. But it’s also going to be up to their adviser Al Haymon to determine if he wants to put them back in with each other. It’s a gamble either way. If Peterson loses a second time to Garcia, his value might drop as a fighter because that would be yet another loss for him. But if Peterson beats Garcia, then we could see Garcia’s stock drop off badly. He already didn’t look good against Peterson in taking a battering from him last Saturday night. Garcia looked more like the loser than the winner, and it did not look good with the way that Garcia was retreating all around the ring in the last two rounds. That’s not the way that a future Floyd Mayweather Jr opponent is supposed to look.

If Mayweather to fight Garcia right now after this fight, Mayweather would take a ton of heat from boxing fans because of how poor Garcia looked. Say what you want about Mayweather’s last opponent Marcos Maidana, at least he looked good in beating Adrien Broner to get his first fight against Mayweather. Maidana earned the second fight against Mayweather by fighting his heart out. Maidana wasn’t running around the ring from Mayweather to escape punishment like Garcia did against Peterson.

Peterson said on his twitter “I did what I came to do. I’m ready for Part Two!”
Garcia won the fight by the scores of 114-114, 115-113 and 115-113.
“I’ll gladly fight him again if he wants,” Peterson said via ESPN.com. “But it was hard enough getting him in the ring the first time.”

I think it’s safe to say that there won’t be another Garcia vs. Peterson fight. It’s a fight that Garcia needs to take to show the boxing fans that his poor performance was just a fluke, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think he or his adviser Haymon see too much risk in a second fight against Peterson, and they’d rather move on and take a couple of fights before facing Mayweather with still and unbeaten record. Garcia can then cash out in that fight in the process of taking a likely one-sided loss. Peterson would likely have to drag Garcia back into the ring to get him to fight him a second time because I don’t see him taking the fight a second time.
Garcia landed 173 of 589 punches, according to CompuBox. Peterson connected on 170 of 494 punches. Peterson would have landed a lot more if he hadn’t spent so much time moving.

“I thought it was close, I’m not gonna lie. But felt like I did enough to win,” Garcia said.

I think a lot of boxing fans would disagree with Garcia. Of course, they had the advantage of watching the fight at a distance instead of being in the ring. But even though Garcia did when the fight, he lost the event. His stock went down while Peterson’s went up. Now it’s up to Garcia to make the right move to bring his popular back up. One way of doing that is to fight Peterson again. Another way of doing it is for Garcia to take on a dangerous welterweight like Marcos Maidana, Adrien Broner or Keith Thurman. Broner and Maidana have already called Garcia out.

If Garcia isn’t interested in facing Peterson again or taking on any quality welterweights, then he’s going to have to likely see his popularity plummet in the same way that a fighter does after he takes a loss. Regardless of the fact that Garcia won the fight, it was seen as a loss by a lot of boxing fans. The body language that Garcia exhibited as he retreated all around the ring in the last four rounds against Peterson was ugly to watch. Garcia’s puffed up right eye made him look even worse. But more important than that was the worry that Garcia showed on his face as he wilted under the pressure from Peterson. That was just sad. Garcia looked scared, confused and defeated. The fact that he was given a controversial decision by the judges doesn’t change anything. He was still seen as a fighter that looked horrible, and he’s now longer seen as a future star by a lot of boxing fans.

“I was putting a lot of effort into the eye to get it to swell up as much as I could,” Peterson said.

Peterson really worked over Garcia’s right eye with his thudding shots. He wasn’t punching with the same kind of power that Garcia was, but he had enough power in his shots to do a lot of damage. Peterson’s power is underrated for sure, and he makes up for what he lacks in one-punch power by him landing a lot of hard shots. The body shots especially seemed to take a lot of energy out of Garcia. He was trying to hold Peterson on the inside to keep him from throwing to the body, but it didn’t work too well. Peterson was still able to break out of his clinches and keep throwing to the body and the head.



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