By Dan Ambrose: The April 11th NBC fight between WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (29-0, 17 KOs) and IBF 140lb champion Lamont Peterson (33-2-1, 17 KOs) just lost what little meaning the fight ever had with the news today that their fight will be at a catch-weight of 143 pounds instead of at the normal 140lb weight for the light welterweight division.
This means that the fight will be a non-title bout with neither guy putting of their straps for the fight. The loser of the fight will get to keep their titles and continue defending them.
According to Dan Rafael of ESPN, this was a move that was initiated by Garcia, who didn’t want to have to struggle to make the 140 pound weight limit. It’s also his second straight fight in which he’s fought at catch-weight over the 140 pound limit. His last fight against little lightweight Rod Salka last August took place at a catch-weight of 142 pounds.
Garcia says he’s slowly moving up to 147 pounds and he wants to take it slow by fighting at catch-weights instead of at 140. The question is why is Garcia even wasting time holding onto the WBA and WBC light welterweight titles if he’s not defending them on a regular basis or putting them on the line for his unification fight?
It’s like he’s keeping them as trophies that he puts on the shelf but doesn’t do anything with other than shining them every once in a while to show them off. The last time Garcia defended his WBA and WBC titles was last year in 2014 when he beat Mauricio Herrera by a controversial decision in a fight that many boxing fans to this day felt Garcia lost.
“I’m slowly making my way up to welterweight,” Garcia said via Dan Rafael of ESPN.com in explaining why he needs a catch-weight of 143 pounds for the Peterson fight. “I feel a lot fresher and stronger. At the end of the day this is a fight the fans want to see no matter what weight.”
Some boxing fans want to see Garcia face Peterson, but I wouldn’t say all of them do. It’s kind of a dull fight, because fans prefer to see Garcia rematch Lucas Matthysse and Mauricio Herrera than face Peterson, a guy that Matthysse blew out in 3 rounds in May of 2013. Peterson has won his last two fights since then in beating Dierry Jean and Edgar Santana, but those guys are far below Matthysse in the talent department.
The Garcia-Peterson fight is not big fight regardless of what Garcia keeps saying about fans wanting to see the fight. Some fans want to see the fight, but it’s not the type of fight where the fans are super excited about the match-up. But with today’s news that the Garcia vs. Peterson fight won’t even have titles on the line, the fans have even less reason to be excited about the match-up.
For Peterson, this is the second fight he’s had without his IBF title being on the line. He didn’t have the title on the line for his fight against Matthysse in 2013, which is why Peterson is still the IBF champion. That wasn’t his call though. It was Matthysses’s idea to have the fight at a catch-weight.
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