Garcia defeats Peterson; Lee – Quillin fight to 12 round draw

By Boxing News - 04/11/2015 - Comments

garcia67By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs) stays unbeaten tonight in defeating IBF 140 pound champion Lamont Peterson (33-3-1, 17 KOs) by an unimpressive 12 round majority decision in their catch-weight fight at 143 pounds on the Premier Boxing Champions on NBC at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, New York. The final judges’ scores were 114-114, 115-113, and 115-113.

Peterson really whipped Garcia in the last half of the fight, and he had Garcia backing up and looking beaten black and blue around the face. Garcia likely would have been knocked out if Peterson pressured him from the beginning of the fight instead of waiting so long before he started coming on in the second half.

Garcia missed a lot of his punches in the fight, and was hitting arms.

The scoring of the fight was controversial due to Peterson not getting credit for some of the good work he did in the first five rounds. Garcia was hitting air frequently during those rounds, as Peterson was able to make him miss constantly with his foot movement. Peterson threw a lot of jabs and was connecting with them. Garcia was able to land an occasional head and body shot during those rounds, but not enough to suggest that he won them all.

Garcia looked like a poor man’s version of Marcos Maidana tonight. He did not look good at all, as he lacked the aggressiveness, fire power, work rate and the size to do much with Peterson.

Garcia won the fight, but Peterson clearly won the event with his late surge in the last five rounds. He badly bruised Garcia’s right eye, and had him backing up in the retreat mode under the constant fire. Garcia had never battered like this before in any of his fights, and it was interesting to see him wilting so quickly under the fire power of Peterson. It goes without saying that Peterson would have won this fight if he had attacked Garcia from the opening bell.

The referee Harvey Dock let Garcia get away with an awful lot of low blows in the fight, and he probably should have taken off at least one, possibly two points for the constant low blows from Garcia.

Garcia was able to control the fight in the first part of the fight due to Peterson using a lot of movement and jabs rather than mixing it up the way he needed to. However, once Peterson start fighting aggressively in the 8th, he dominated most of the remaining rounds. The only round that Garcia appeared to win in the last five rounds was the 10th, and that was only because Peterson got back on his bike.

If there’s a rematch between Garcia and Peterson, which I highly doubt, I think Peterson will win it. However, I don’t see Garcia agreeing to a second fight against him because Peterson clearly has his number now and knows how to beat him. You can look for Garcia to take it easy by facing strictly beatable fighters until he gets a cash out fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. As bad as Garcia looked against Peterson tonight, I see Mayweather winning every round against him. Garcia looked really bad in this fight and got exposed in a major way by Peterson.

Peterson’s trainer Barry Hunter should have been putting some fire under the backside of his fighter to get him to start fighting aggressively much earlier in the fight, because he waited too long before he had Peterson go on the attack mode against Garcia.

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Former WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin (31-0-1, 22 KOs) fought to a 12 round draw against WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs) in their non-title bout. The final judges’ scores were 113-112 for Lee, 113-112 for Quillin and 113-113. Quillin was dropped once in the 7th from a right hook from Lee.

Lee, 30, was knocked down twice in the fight in getting put down once in the 1st and another time in the 3rd. But the referee Steve Willis blew the call in scoring a knockdown in the 3rd, as Quillin hit Lee while stepping on his toe. Had the referee ruled it correctly, Lee would have won the fight. One of the judges scored the 3rd round a 10-9 round despite the bogus knockdown. If the judge had scored it 10-8 like the other two judges, Quillin would have won the fight. Both Lee and Quillin have a reason to be unhappy with the events in the 3rd. Lee was slightly bleeding from a cut right eye in the 3rd.

Lee was on the attack most of the fight, but he struggled in the first five rounds with the fast combinations from Quillin. Lee was rocked in the 1st badly after getting hurt by a right hand. After the action resumed, Quillin staggered Lee with some additional big shots. In the 4th and the 5th, Quillin had Lee looking a little woozy after nailing him with big shots.

Lee started coming on from the 8th round on, and was able to dominate the 8th through 12th rounds with his accurate left hands and right hooks. Quillin almost completely stopped throwing punches in the last five rounds of the fight for some reason. In between the 11th and 12th rounds, Quillin whispered something to his trainer while in the corner. It’s possible that Quillin injured one of his hands.

After the fight, Quillin said “There’s a reason why judges are judges.”

It’s unclear whether there will be a rematch or not for the two fighters to clear up the decision. It’s better if the two of them face each other again, but it might need to wait a while because Lee has a mandatory defense he needs to get out of the way against Billy Joe Saunders.

Quillin had no chance of winning the fight tonight due to him coming in over the middleweight weight limit of 160 pounds at the weigh-in last Friday.

Other boxing results on the card:

Luis Collazo TKO 2 Christopher Degollado
Ryan Burnett KO 1 Stephon McIntyre
Prichard Colon TKO 9 Daniel Calzada
Viktor Postol UD 8 Jake Giuriceo



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