Matthysse wants Mayweather or Pacquiao after Postol

By Boxing News - 09/30/2015 - Comments

matthysse567676By Dan Ambrose: #2 WBC 140lb contender Lucas Matthysse (37-3, 34 KOs) is hoping he can get a victory over #1 WBC Viktor Postol (27-0, 11 KOs) and use the win to get a much bigger fight against either Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao. Matthysse feels that he deserves a big money fight against one of those guys due to all the big fights he’s had I his career.

Matthysse says he wants to move up in weight to fight the bigger names in the near future after he hopefully beats the taller 5’11” Ukrainian Postol in their fight on HBO from the StubHub Center in Carson, California this Saturday night on October 3rd.

Matthysse and Postol will be fighting for Danny Garcia’s vacant WBC light welterweight title on 10/3. The world Boxing Council had to strip Garcia of the title when he failed to vacate it after opting not to defend it for over a year. Instead of defending his WBC title after a close call win over Mauricio Herrera in Puerto Rico, Garcia chose to fight catch-weight bouts against the likes of little Rod Salka from the lightweight division and Lamont Peterson.

Why Garcia didn’t choose to fight welterweights at a catch-weight is unclear. Perhaps his controversial win over Herrera may have unnerved him, or maybe he was just fighting the guys that his adviser Al Haymon was telling him to fight. Whatever the case, Garcia would have been better off fighting welterweights at catch-weights instead of a little lightweight like Salka and Lamont Peterson.

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Start time: 10:15 p.m. ET/7:15 PT.

“It’s a fight [Mayweather] that was mentioned and taken away, and yes, I would love to fight him because he’s No.1 pound-for-pound and he’s the fighter to beat. I would make a great strategy and go in there to win the fight,” Matthysse said via Fighthub.

Mayweather retired after his win over Andre Berto on September 12th of this month, and presumably, he’s going to stay retired. We do know that Mayweather said last night at the Premier Boxing Champions card in Las Vegas, Nevada that “I’m not coming back,” but we’ll have to see whether that turns out to be true or not. If not, then the 5’6 ½” Matthysse will have a small chance of getting a fight against Mayweather in 2016. I wouldn’t say it’s a good chance though because Mayweather can make a lot more money fighting other fighters like Manny Pacquiao.

Mayweather already beat a bigger version of Matthysse in 5’8” Marcos Maidana twice in 2014. Facing a smaller fighter like Matthysse might not motivate Mayweather that much.

“What can I tell you? He [Danny Garcia] ran. He ran like a chicken [from the 140lb division],” Matthysse said. “No, obviously he couldn’t make the weight anymore. He had to move up, and now is the opportunity for me to win the world title. I’m going to win it on October 3rd, and next year maybe we go up to 147, and keep chasing him [Danny Garcia],” Matthysse said.

Matthysse was beaten by Danny Garcia by a 12 round unanimous decision in 2013 by the scores of 114-112, 115-111 and 114-112. Garcia used a lot of movement, holding, low blows and jabbing to get the victory. Matthysse could have won the fight if he hadn’t suffered an eye injury in the first half of the contest. He was doing well until he suffered a swollen eye. But it was a combination of factors that led to Matthysse losing.

Garcia inflicted a lot of damage to Matthysse with his constant low blows in the fight. It’s unclear why referee Tony Weeks waited until the 12th round before he finally took a point away from Garcia for his shots below the belt.

It almost looked like the low blows were a strategy for Garcia with the frequency of the shots below the belt. Having seen Garcia’s previous fights, I’d never seen him throw low blows like that before over and over again. The low blows seemed to sap the energy out of Matthysse each time he started getting some momentum going.

“He’s [Postol] a similar style and size of John Molina,” Matthysse said.

Matthysse had problems with the 5’10 ½” John Molina’s height, reach, and more importantly with his punching power in their fight last year in 2014. Molina dropped Matthysse twice in the first half of the fight in getting knocked down in the 2nd and 5th rounds. But once Matthysse figured out how to handle Molina’s huge size, he was able to batter him in the 2nd half of the fight and knocked him down in the 8th and 10th rounds in the process of getting an 11th round knockout victory in their fight in April 2014.

When asked if he’d like to fight WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford in a unification fight if/when he beats Postol on Saturday night, Matthysse said “No, I would like a bigger fight after this. Pacquiao or Mayweather. I think I deserve it after all these fights, and all these victories and winning the title. I deserve a big fight. I want to see what’s next. I want to go up to 147,” Matthysse said.

There’s no money in a fight between Matthysse and Crawford. For Matthysse to get money, he needs to fight guys that have a huge following in the United States. Crawford is still a niche fighter. He’s popular in his home state of Nebraska and with a segment of the boxing community, who like watching counter punchers rather than sluggers, but Crawford doesn’t have a following like Gennady Golovkin.

Matthysse needs to fight someone with a huge fan base for him to make money and get credit from boxing fans. Pacquiao would be perfect, but he appears to be on his last legs in terms of his career. His promoter Bob Arum will likely use the remaining time that he has in his career to match him against his Top Rank fighters that he wants to turn into stars like Crawford, Tim Bradley or Brandon Rios. Unfortunately, those aren’t going to become stars beating Pacquiao, because he’s too long in the tooth now and he’s already been exposed by Mayweather.

“No, I think he’ll [Mayweather] find an easier opponent [than Andre Berto] next time so that he can keep fighting. Mayweather deserves to fight someone that is coming to win,” Matthysse said.

It would be nice if Mayweather fought Matthysse, but I don’t see it happening.



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