Lamont Peterson to fight in September

By Boxing News - 07/09/2015 - Comments

peterson66By Dan Ambrose: IBF light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (33-3-1, 17 KOs) will be back inside the ring in September against an opponent still to be determined, according to his trainer Barry Hunter. He’s not sure which weight Peterson will be fighting at.

Peterson could drop back down to 140 if a significant fight turns up that interests him. Peterson fought his last fight at a catch-weight of 143 pounds against Danny Garcia last April. Peterson, 31, lost the fight by a 12 round majority decision, but a lot of boxing fans felt that Peterson fought well enough to deserve the decision in the fight. However, the judges gave the fight to Garcia by the scores of 115-113, 115-113 and 114-114.

“Lamont can still make 140,” Hunter said to ESPN.com. “I think the next fight will probably between 140 and 147, maybe 143-ish, 146. But if a title fight comes up at 140 or 147, we’ll take it. You know Lamont. He’ll fight anybody. Always has. Al and I are supposed to talk this weekend about things.”

Peterson’s adviser Al Haymon will make the decision who he faces on his Premier Boxing Champions [PBC] series. Hunter will be talking to Haymon this coming weekend to discuss potential opponents for Peterson to fight.

Peterson showed in the Garcia fight that he’s big enough, strong enough and rugged enough to fight at 147. He’d give most of the fighters in the division a lot of problems. It would be interesting to see Peterson fight for a world title against IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook, but obviously Peterson’s loss to Garcia makes it highly unlikely he’ll get the fight against Brook for a number of reasons.

The loss gives Brook and his promoter a reason not to fight Peterson, but the way he gave Garcia so many problems might scare Hearn and Brook away because the last thing they need is a fighter that can brawl like Peterson. Brook doesn’t have an inside game, so it would be a really tough fight for him to deal with a guy like Peterson.

A rematch between Peterson and Garcia would be an interesting fight. Their fight last April brought in excellent ratings on NBC. However, Garcia has already said that he’s not interested in fighting Peterson again because he feels that he won the fight by a comfortable enough margin to where they don’t need to fight again. I’m sure that a lot of boxing fans would beg to differ on this opinion, as many of them feel that Peterson did more than enough to deserve the win. A lot of fans also think it should have been scored a draw.



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