By Dan Ambrose: A fight between #1 WBC Viktor Postol (27-0, 11 KOs) and #2 WBC Lucas Matthysse (37-3, 34 KOs) is in the works for September 26th, according to Fight News. Postol vs. Matthysse has been ordered by the World Boxing Council to fight for the vacant WBC 140 pound title that was recently stripped from champion Danny Garcia, who had failed to defend the belt for well over a year.
Garcia had just been sitting on the title while taking one catch-weight fight after another in the welterweight division.
This fight gives Matthysse a very good chance of capturing the WBC title if he can deal with the height, reach and high work rate of the 5’11” Postol. Matthysse is coming off of a grueling 12 round majority decision win over Ruslan Provodnikov last April.
Matthysse totally battered the over-matched Provodnikov in the first six rounds, but the Russian fighter came back strong in the second half of the fight to make it close. Matthysse faded badly and took a lot of punishment in that fight. Hopefully for Matthysse’s sake, he’ll be ready for another hard fight.
He’ll only have a total of five months between the Provodnikov and Postol fight for him to rest up. The good thing about the Postol fight is that Matthysse won’t have to worry about getting hit with the same kind of heavy shots that he did against Provodnikov, because Postol isn’t a big puncher. However, he throws a lot of punches and he’s not the easiest guy to hit. Matthysse will need to put a lot of pressure on Postol if he wants to get him out of there.
Postol hasn’t been all that busy as of late. He fought only once in 2014 in beating Selcuk Aydin by an 11th round knockout. Postol stopped Aydin with an accumulation of blows. This year, Postol defeated Jake Giuriceo by an 8 round unanimous decision in April. Postol’s best wins have come against Hank Lundy, DeMarcus Corley and Jose Lopez.
Postol clearly doesn’t have the same experience that Matthysse has going for him. However, that doesn’t mean that Postol can’t necessarily beat Matthysse. It’s quite possible that with his size and long reach, he’ll be able to pound out a decision if Matthysse can’t figure out how to close the distance to land his much bigger power shots.
Matthysse was beaten by Danny Garcia in a fight in 2013. Matthysse didn’t know how to deal with Garcia’s punch, grab and low blow routine that he had for the fight. There were ways that Matthysse could have should have adapted to what Garcia was doing, but he failed to do that. When you have a fighter that is hitting you with low blows after low blows in front of the referee, you fire back with your own to get them to stop. Sooner or later, the referee is basically shamed into doing his job. The other thing that Matthysse failed to do was deal with Garcia’s constant holding. If Matthysse had continued to throw punches while being held, he likely would have won the fight. We saw Shawn Porter recently deal with Adrien Broner’s constant holding last Saturday night by letting his hands go while being held, and it worked out well for Porter. Instead of Matthysse fighting through the clinching from Garcia, he passively just gave up and waited until the referee Tony Weeks stepped each time to break them apart. But with Garcia grabbing Matthysse over and over again to keep him from throwing punches, it prevented Matthysse from being able to get his shots off.
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