(Photo credit: Ed Mulholland/HBO) By Dan Ambrose: #3 WBO light welterweight contender Lucas Matthysse (36-3, 34 KOs) successfully weighed in on Friday for his fight against #4 WBO Ruslan Provodnikov (24-3, 17 KOs) on Saturday night on HBO Championship Boxing from the Turning Stone Resort & Casino, in Verona, New York, USA. Matthysse weighed in at 139 and Provodnikov came in at 139.5.
Matthysse, 32, is considered to be the favorite over Provodnikov in the minds of a lot of boxing fans. The reason for this is his ability to box as well punch. Matthysse can do it all when he wants to. He’ll likely not stand in front of Provodnikov and slug with him all night long due to the danger involved.
Provodnikov has already shown that he can be out-boxed in some of his last fights against DeMarcus Corley, Mauricio Herrera, Tim Bradley and Chris Algieri. All of those guys out-boxed Provodnikov and had him looking really bad.
Provodnikov built his name on his fight against Bradley, which he lost, and his win over Mike Alvarado. Other than those two fights, Provodnikov hasn’t beaten anyone of note.
Matthysse should take care of Provodnikov fairly easy. I don’t rate Provodnikov as being in the same league as Humberto Soto and Lamont Peterson. Matthysse easily beat those two fighters by early stoppages.
Provodnikov will likely take a bad beating in this fight. He’s got a great chin and can take a ton of punishment. That may work against him on Saturday night though with Provodnikov taking a lot of punishment in the process of losing the fight. Unless his corner throws in the towel or if the fight is stopped on a cut, I think Provodnikov will get battered in this fight.
Compared to some of his other fights, Provodnikov hasn’t appeared as confident as he usually is. He looked uncomfortable at the weigh-in, and didn’t look like the same person who had faced Bradley and Alvarado. Whether that’s because he realizes that he may have met his match is unclear. But this is definitely a huge jump up in class for Provodnikov in terms of talent and punching ability. This is Provodnikov’s first real fight against an intelligent slugger, and it may go bad for him.
It’s unclear if Matthysse will opt to face the winner of Saturday’s fight between Thomas Dulorme and Terence Crawford. The Crawford-Dulorme fight will be for the vacant WBO 140 pound title. Crawford is with Top Rank, and Matthysse is with Golden Boy.
If Matthysse gets by Provodnikov tomorrow night then the logical fight for Matthysse will be a fight against the Crawford-Dulorme winner, even though it probably won’t be a big money fight. A bigger fighter would be against Danny Garcia, but he’s shown no interest in wanting to fight Matthysse again after beating him in 2013.
Below are the official weighs for the card:
Patrick Teixeira 160 vs. Patrick Allotey 157
Lamont Roach Jr. 133.5 vs. Jose Miguel Castro 133
Sidney McCow 146 vs. Paulo Souza 150.5
Vitor Freitas 135 vs. Guillermo Sanchez 133
Vitaly Kopylenko 160 vs. Lekan Byfield 158
Eddie Gomez 149 vs. Jonathan Batista 149.5
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