Roach wants Matthysse-Provodnikov rematch

By Boxing News - 10/05/2015 - Comments

postol111(Photo credit: Sumio Yamada) By Dan Ambrose: Now that his fighter Viktor Postol (28-0, 12 KOs) has beaten Lucas Matthysse (37-4, 34 KOs) by a 10th round knockout last Saturday night at the StubHub Center in Carson, California, trainer Freddie Roach would like for one of his other fighters #4 WBO, #5 WBC, #8 WBA 140lb contender Ruslan Provodnikov (24-4, 17 KOs) to get a chance to avenge his loss to Matthysse by fighting him again.

Matthysse defeated Provodnikov by a 12 round majority decision last April at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino, in Verona, New York, USA. It was an exciting back and forth fight that resulted in Matthysse winning by the scores of 114-114, 115-113 and 115-113. Matthysse dominated the action in the first half of the fight, and then Provodnikov came on in the last six rounds to make it close.

It would be a good way for both of these fighters to try and regain some lost ground with their careers. Provodnikov, 31, especially needs a win over Matthysse right now because he’s lost 3 out of his last 5 fights, and his career was really hurt by those losses.

“We’re now looking at guys like Terence Crawford, who is a good fighter also, but I don’t think he can handle my guy [Postol],” Roach said to Fighthub.com. “Ruslan [Provodnikov] would like to get him [Matthysse] back one more time. It would be a great fight. I’d like to have Ruslan use a different style and boxing a bit more,” Roach said.

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Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya is going to need to come up with a good idea to help Matthysse come back from his loss to Postol. It might be a good thing for him to keep Matthysse away from taller fighters for a while, because he’s had problems against guys like the 5’10 ½” John Molina, 5’8” Danny Garcia and 5’11” Postol.

Putting Matthysse in the 5’10 ½” Amir Iman might not be a good idea right now because the chances of Matthysse losing that fight would be too high despite the fact that Iman isn’t a clincher like Postol.

At least if De La Hoya put Matthysse back in with the 5’6” Provodnikov, he would be in with a guy that is roughly the same size as him, and it would give Matthysse a likely chance to get a nice $500,000 payday if HBO was willing to televise a second fight between him and Provodnikov.

I think they would, because it would be a much more exciting fight for the causal and hardcore boxing fans than the very boring Postol vs. Matthysse right ended up being. That’s not a knock on Postol. He did a lot of holding in that fight and moving around the ring. If you compare the Matthysse-Postol fight with the Matthysse-Provodnikov fight, I think you’d agree that the Matthysse/Provodnikov fight was the much superior fight. It didn’t have as much riding on the fight in terms of a title being on the line, but it was just splendid entertainment for the average boxing fan.

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Speaking about the Postol-Crawford match-up, Roach said “It’s a great fight, but we’d probably have to go to his hometown. If we got to his [Crawford] hometown, they’d have to pay me more money. It has a lot of things that could make that fight not happen.”

A fight between WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford and Postol should be easy to make because they both share the same promoter in Bob Arum of Top Rank, but I doubt that Arum will want to make that fight happen because it’s better if he keeps those two fighters in separate lanes right now.

They both can make more money by milking their titles against weak opposition than to fight each other for one big payday. Look at who Arum is matching against Crawford for his fight this month on October 24th at the CenturyLink Center, in Omaha, Nebraska. Arum has matched Crawford against lightweight Dierry Jean. Arum didn’t even bother to match Crawford against a light welterweight contender.

That tells me that he’s being very protective of Crawford like a mother hen and he’s not going to take any risks in having him get beaten by matching him against a fighter like Postol or anyone really good. I think Arum is saving Crawford up for a fight against his money fighter Manny Pacquiao for either early 2016 or the second half of 2016.

It is in Arum’s best interest to keep Crawford unbeaten until that fight takes place. Not only does Arum need to keep Crawford unbeaten, he also needs to make sure that he looks really impressive in winning his fights. What better way to do that then to put him in with guys from a division below him like Dierry Jean. In Crawford’s last fight, instead of being matched against a dangerous guy with punching power like Matthysse or Provodnikov, Arum matched him against Thomas Dulorme.



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