By Dan Ambrose: Angel Garcia, the trainer/father for WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (29-0, 17 KOs), thinks that IBF 140 pound champion Lamont Peterson (33-2-1, 17 KOs) is going to get stopped early in their fight this Saturday on April 11th if Peterson comes out swinging in their fight at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Angel sees Danny’s punching power as being too formidable for Peterson to be able to take if he walks into the teeth of Danny’s offense in their fight on NBC on Premier Boxing Champions (PBC). The Garcia-Peterson fight will be at a catch-weight of 143 pounds, which means that Garcia will have more punching power than he’s had in his normal fights at 140.
Garcia appears to be a much better puncher than he already is when he fights over 140. He probably made the move up to welterweight a long time ago because he’s a big fighter for the light welterweight division.
The Garcia-Peterson fight won’t have world titles on the line due to the fight taking place at welterweight rather than light welterweight. It’s still unknown if Garcia will hold onto his 140 pound titles much longer or if he’ll give them up so that he can dedicate himself to fighting at 147. Once he does move up in weight, it could be harder for him to come back down to 140 if he finds the going a little bit too tough for him at 147.
“April 11th, Danny’s going to go in there and do his thing. If Peterson opens up early, he’s getting knocked out early,” Angel said via Thaboxingvoice.com. “If it goes the distance it is what it, Danny still the undefeated champ of the world. They ain’t going to say champ, but he’ll be undefeated.”
Peterson only knows how to fight in one way and that’s by going forward and slugging it out with his opponents. This fight could end early if Garcia is able to catch Peterson with one of his big left hooks. However, if Peterson is able to take away Garcia’s left hook or handle the power, then Garcia is going to be forced to clinch constantly like he did against Lucas Matthysse if he wants to win the fight. Hopefully, Garcia doesn’t throw low blows constantly like he did against Matthysse as well because the fight will be unwatchable if that happens. Garcia got away with a massive amount of low blows in the Matthysse fight with only point deduction. You can make an argument that Garcia should have been disqualified in that fight because the low blows seemed to have a real negative affect on Matthysse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPZcxbxeH6Q
Garcia will be the WBA/WBC light welterweight champion until he vacates or has the titles stripped from him. It’s surprising that the two sanctioning bodies aren’t saying anything about Garcia not having defended the titles since last year. If he’s only going to defend the titles once a year, then it’s obviously going to be tough for the contenders in the division. They’re not getting shots at the two titles on a regular basis.
Garcia’s last fight was against lightweight Rod Salka in a catch-weight fight at 142 pounds last year in August. Neither of Garcia’s titles were on the line for that fight. The last title defense that Garcia made was his controversial 12 round decision win over Mauricio Herrera in March of 2014.
A lot of boxing fans think that Garcia lost that fight. Whatever the case, Garcia has zero interest in clearing up the controversy from that fight by facing Herrera a second time. Like his fight against Lucas Matthysse, Garcia is moving on to what he says are bigger and better things.
I’m not sure that you can call the Salka and Peterson fight as being bigger and better than the Matthysse and Herrera fights. I think it’s more of a case of Garcia going downwards rather than upwards, because boxing fans would likely prefer to see Garcia face Matthysse and Herrera in rematches rather than see him fight guys like Rod Salka and Peterson.
There’s nothing wrong with Peterson as a fighter until you realize that he was knocked out in three rounds by Matthysse in 2013. That kind of has killed a lot of the interest in the Garcia-Peterson fight, because Peterson wouldn’t even be the IBF light welterweight champion right now if his fight against Matthysse wasn’t a catch-weight fight without Peterson’s IBF title being on the line for the fight.
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