lee1 By Daniel Reed:

Andy Lee vs. Peter Quillin
The first televised fight of the night here in the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn was an intriguing Middleweight match-up between the very popular “Irish” Andy Lee (34-2, 24 KO’s) of Limerick, Ireland, and Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin (31-0, 22 KO’s) of Brooklyn by way of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The red hot Lee was coming off two impressive come-from-behind, Gatti-esque knockout victories over John Jackson of the Virgin Islands at 154 lbs., and the former Olympian and amateur standout from Russia, Matt Korobov. Who was undefeated as a pro up until his 6th round TKO loss to Lee. Lee’s aforementioned fight with Korobov was for the vacant WBO World Middleweight Title that Quillin had vacated. So in this case, Lee was supposed to be defending his WBO World Middleweight Title against Quillin, but in this case, Kid Chocolate, or should I say, “Too much Chocolate”, came in overweight twice and thus was ineligible to fight for Lee’s belt, making the fight a non-title bout. This was the first time Quillin had fought in almost over a year, his last bout being a Unanimous Decision victory over Lukas Konecny of the Czech Republic in his third title defense, his last two having been a 10th round TKO of Philly’s Gabriel Rosado and a 7th round TKO over Fernando Guerrero of the Dominican Republic, all of this following his title winning effort over Hassan N’Dam in which he dropped the aforementioned N’Dam 6 times over the course of the bout.

Quillin’s fight with Andy Lee was supposed to be his toughest test to date, and it most certainly was…but it didn’t start out that way…in what was otherwise a good round for Lee, with 30 seconds left to go, Quillin launched a looping right hand to the point of Lee’s chin and set him down. The blood-and-guts Irishman rose to his feet, but was visibly hurt, and at the end of the round, Quillin blasted him with a hard left hook just after the bell that nearly crumpled Lee into the corner. At the end of the first round Lee looked almost out on his feet, and many viewers may have thought it was going to be an early night. However this was not to be. The rest of this fight, and the main event between Garcia and Peterson had one outstanding quality in common, they were both chess matches, with a little bit of war sprinkled in. Lee and Quillin, both natural counter-punchers, spent a lot of time feeling each other out, and looking for the right moment to unleash heavy artillery, so they didn’t throw too many punches, but the ones they did throw were encased with dynamite. The third round started fast, with Lee seeming to momentarily wobble Quillin with a hard left hand, then bam, Lee was on the canvas again. However this time in controversial fashion, as the referee did not see that Lee went down mostly because Quillin was standing on his foot, and that the punch did not really land cleanly.

Over the course of the next few rounds Lee got into a boxing groove and began to work his way back into the fight, he put an exclamation mark on this in round 7. Near the end of the round Lee threw a looping left hand to set up a hard right hook, Lee’s money punch, and land right on the money it did. Next thing you know, Quillin is down for the first time in his career, but he managed to make it through the round and regrouped quite well. Many of the rounds in this fight were close rounds, swing rounds that could have gone to either fighter, particularly the mid to late rounds. However as the rounds wore on it became clear that Lee had gotten into a groove. By the end of the 12th round, after having two knockdown scores against him in the first half of the fight, Lee had managed to come back enough to bring doubt as to what the scorecards might read. Neither fighter seemed to really do enough to convincingly take rounds in the fight, it was a close fight, and the official scorecards reflected that. 113-112 for Lee, 113-112 for Quillin, and the deciding scorecard was 113-113, rendering the official outcome of the fight a split draw. Lee obviously remains the reigning WBO World Middleweight Champion and looks set to defend his belt against Hertfordshire’s slick southpaw, Billy Joe Saunders in this coming summer in Ireland, and is looking at a possible unification bout with Golovkin down the line should he come through his defense against Saunders. Both fighters earned a lot of respect in this fight, both from the fans and each other, showing a lot of intangibles, heart, courage, and a sense of relaxation in the face of adversity, whilst also displaying their world class boxing skills. An overall good fight.

Danny Garcia vs. Lamont Peterson

The main event showcased the talents of Philadelphia’s own Puerto Rican, Danny “Swift” Garcia (30-0, 17 KO’s), and Lamont “Havoc” Peterson (33-2, 17 KO’s) of Washington DC. Danny Garcia was looking to re-establish legitimacy in the sport, his last two fights included an absolutely RAZOR thin Majority Decision win over California’s Mauricio Herrera in Puerto Rico (a fight most, including myself, thought Herrera won), and a 2nd round blast-out of horrendously outmatched Pennsylvania Lightweight, Rod Salka (a fight Garcia was highly criticized for). Peterson was still attempting to regain his place in the sport after he was knocked out inside 3 rounds by the hard-hitting Lucas Matthysse of Argentina, who actually lost a unanimous decision to Danny Garcia. Peterson’s last two fights since the loss included a successful defense of Peterson’s IBF World Super-Lightweight title against Canadian Dierry Jean in the DC Armory by Unanimous decision, and a second successful defense against Puerto Rican Edgar Santana by 10th round TKO in this same arena in Brooklyn on August 9th of 2014.

This fight, akin to the fight just before it, was a close fight all around. Peterson seemed to baffle Garcia with slick boxing movement and ring generalship in the early rounds. However Peterson’s low output made it hard to convincingly give him the rounds. He wasn’t landing clean enough or hard enough on a consistent basis to really steal the rounds from Garcia, who was landing few punches but seemed to be landing cleaner and harder at times early on. Several of these rounds though, again, were swing rounds. You could make a case for either fighter taking the rounds. This is what seemed to be where the case was made for Danny Garcia, who seemed to take the vast majority of these rounds on the judges’ cards. However Peterson seemed to have a solid game plan, and he was sticking to it. Taunting from Garcia urging Peterson to stand and fight him toe-to-toe illustrated his level of frustration as Peterson’s ring generalship and footwork was really preventing problems for Garcia early, even if Garcia was stealing these early rounds.

There was a noticeable change in the 8th round however, as Peterson’s game plan flipped. He began coming forward, pressuring Garcia, putting him on the back foot, and landing hard, clean punches to the body and head. Garcia seemed just as bothered by the change in strategy as he was by the movement, however he continued landing clean punches on Peterson through combinations or in the middle of exchanges. That, though, did not change the fact that these were Peterson’s rounds. He was landing cleaner now, he was landing harder now, and he was landing consistently with nice and creative inside combinations. This is where scoring the fight got difficult. The obvious swing in momentum for Peterson late, combined with the swing rounds early on made the fight an iffy one to try and score. Many people saw Peterson as the winner, and you could certainly make a case for that, but the official scorecards read differently. 113-115 for Garcia, 114-114 a draw, and 113-115 again for Garcia, giving Philadelphia’s Garcia the close Majority Decision win, capping off a fun night at the fights out in Brooklyn.