Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson in action on August 9th in separate fights at Barclays Center

By Boxing News - 06/24/2014 - Comments

garcia777By Allan Fox: WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (28-0, 16 KO’s) and IBF 140 pound champion Lamont Peterson (32-2-1, 16 KO’s) will both be in action in separate bouts on August 9th in a Showtime televised card from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The idea of having Peterson and Garcia on the same card is to attract interest in the two fighters for a unification bout between them later on this year.

There had been talk that Garcia would be moving up to welterweight later this year in order to get him ready for a big money fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr in 2015. Garcia is still going to be moving up in weight to 147 next year, but it’ll be after his unification bout against Peterson at 140 this year.

Obviously there’s some risk involved for Garcia to take a tough fight against Peterson, because if he loses this fight then he can forget all about a Mayweather fight next year. Fans won’t want to see a fight between Mayweather and Garcia under those circumstances.

According to Dan Rafael, the Kell Brook vs. Shawn Porter fight, which had originally been scheduled to take place on the card, won’t be taking place on that date. Instead, it’ll be moved to different date, and possibly a different venue.

Garcia, 26, will be in the main event against an opponent still to be determined. Garcia’s No.1 challenger is Viktor Postol (26-0, 11 KO’s), who recently stopped Selcuk Aydin in the 11th round last May. Postol, 5’11”, would be an extremely difficult fight for Garcia, and it would be very surprising if Garcia’s adviser Al Haymon had him taking this fight, even though its’ easily the best match-up there is for Garcia unless they want to put him back in with Lucas Matthysse or Mauricio Herrera in rematches. Garcia won a controversial 12 round majority decision over Herrera last March in a fight where boxing fans saw Garcia losing. Garcia isn’t too concerned about what the fans’ perception of that fight is, as he’s showed no interest at all in facing Herrera again.

Garcia’s likely opponent will be someone beatable that will give him 90% chance of winning, such as Humberto Soto or Thomas Dulorme. Haymon likely won’t risk putting Garcia in with Postol, and definitely not with Matthysse.

Peterson is coming off of an impressive 12 round decision win over IBF No.1 Dierry Jean last January. Peterson’s likely opponent will be someone along the lines of #1 IBF Cesar Cuenca, #4 IBF Dulorme, #5 IBF Lenny Zappavigna or #9 IBF Antonio DeMarco. It won’t be Matthysse, that’s for sure. Peterson was destroyed by Matthysse in 3 rounds in their fight last year in May at 141 pounds. Since the fight didn’t take place in the light welterweight division, Peterson didn’t lose his IBF title. It was a bad deal for Matthysse to have agreed upon the fight under those circumstances, because he wasn’t given the opportunity to fight for the IBF title and he should have been allowed to.

Middleweight contender Daniel Jacobs (27-1, 24 KOs) will be fighting Jarrod Fletcher (18-1, 10 KOs) for the vacant WBA middleweight title on the card. The World Boxing Association has two world titles at 160, which is why Jacobs and Fletcher will be fighting for the WBA World middleweight title. The other WBA champion at 160 is WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.



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