By Eric Thomas: IBF light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (31-2-1, 16 KO’s) has a risky fight tonight against the unbeaten and untested #1 IBF Dierry Jean (25-0, 17 KP’s) at the DC Armory, Washington, District of Columbia, USA. Peterson, 30, was stopped in the 3rd round in his last fight against slugger Lucas Matthysse last year in May.
The fight was staged at 141, and that allowed Peterson to keep his IBF 140 lb. title because it wasn’t on the line for the fight. It was a wise move by Peterson to make sure that Matthysse didn’t have a chance to win the IBF title, because otherwise Peterson would be starting over from scratch for this fight with Jean.
This is going to be potentially a really tough fight for Peterson, because Jean has excellent power. Jean doesn’t have a ton of knockouts on his resume, but he has enough to show that he can knock you out if don’t get out of the way of his big shots. Jean’s best wins thus far have come against Cleotis Pendarvis, Lanardo Tyner, Francisco Lorenzo and Juan Jesus Rivera.
The 31-year-old Jean has been taken at a very slow pace with his career to make sure that there wasn’t any slip ups for him. It’s worked well for him because he’s still unbeaten, and in a position to capture the IBF 140 lb. title tonight and then be in position to get bigger fights in 2014.
Peterson can’t afford to lose this fight if he wants to stay in the running for some interesting fights of his own. Losing to Matthysse is understandable considering the way that Peterson elected to fight him by standing right in front of him, but if Peterson loses to Jean as well then he’s going to have to clim his way back to the top. At 30, Peterson isn’t young, so he would need to push his career in overdrive to try and get back to the top. The problem that Peterson has is he lacks power, and his chances of beating Danny Garcia to capture are slim and none. As for the WBO champion Ruslan Provodnikov, that’s an equally tough fight for Peterson due to the big power that Provodnikov has going for him.
The key to victory for Peterson tonight is for him to use his jab and focus on boxing Jean. He’s got to stay on the outside and not let Jean land his big shots, because if he can catch Peterson in his wheelhouse, he could stop him the same way that Matthysse did.
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