Garcia beats Peterson – You can’t win a fight running

By Boxing News - 04/11/2015 - Comments

garcia444By Bill Gabay: The game plan was good and the effort in the later rounds even better, but Lamont Peterson fell short in his match against Danny Garcia tonight on PBC on NBC losing a 12-round majority decision.

A win against the undefeated Garcia would have been impressive as the fighter from Philadelphia is well-coached (by his father-trainer), has great technical skills and possesses power in both hands. Garcia has beaten the likes of Lucas Matthyse, Zab Judah, Amir Khan and Erik Morales (twice).

But Peterson spent the first half of the fight running across the ring in an effort to tire Garcia and evade his punches. (It almost seemed that Peterson was under the impression he was earning points for every punch he ducked under.) It was clear that Team Peterson was going to use superior conditioning and late round stamina to their fighter’s advantage.

Come the 7-8th round, Peterson finally decided to make a fight out of it and began stalking Garcia, who surprisingly enough was allowing himself to be backed down probably due to fatigue.

Peterson started to connect and land good punches to the body and occasionally to the head. There were some good trades and combinations from both boxers which gave life to what started out to be snoozer (due to Peterson’s “constant motion”).

At the end of the fight, Garcia looked like he was beaten up and ready to take his first career loss. But as what happens often in fights where one boxer plays more “dodge-ball” than boxing, Garcia’s aggressiveness early in the match and early lead in points made the difference.

During the on-ring post fight interview, Garcia said he told Peterson “You can’t win a fight running.” While that is established in fighting sports, can the blame be put on Peterson for moving too much? Could Peterson have survived fighting Garcia toe-to-toe?

A rematch may be the only way to tell.



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