By Allan Fox: Lucas Matthysse (37-3, 34 KOs) will be getting another crack at the WBC light welterweight title when he faces the nonstop punching machine Viktor Postol (27-0, 11 KOs) on October 3rd in a fight that will be televised by HBO Boxing After Dark from the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Matthysse previously fought for the WBC 140lb title when he faced former champion Danny Garcia in September 2013. However, Matthysse suffered an eye injury in the first half of the fight, and wasn’t able to fight as effectively in the last six rounds due to the injury, the low blows, holding and moving that Garcia used.
Matthysse didn’t know how to deal with Garcia frequent low blows, and the referee Tony Weeks seemed helpless to police them. A good referee would have taken points away from Garcia early in the fight, but he was allowed to get away with it until the 12th round.
This is a tough fight for Matthysse to be taken given that he’s coming off of a grueling 12 round was against Ruslan Provodnikov in his last fight. Postol doesn’t have the same kind of punching power that Provodnikov has, but he’s a lot taller than the 5’7” Matthysse at 5’11”, and he’s capable of throwing 100 punches per round. Matthysse cannot let Postol get that many shots off against him without clipping him in between.
Postol likes to move around a lot, so Matthysse will need to be ready to cut off the ring for him to have a chance of winning. Matthysse has a big power and experience advantage over Postol. There’s no comparison. Postol can’t punch anywhere close to what Matthysse can.
Postol also hasn’t faced the same caliber opposition. The best two fighters that Postol has faced are Hank Lundy and Selcuk Aydin. There’s a worlds of difference between Matthysse’s experience and Postol’s.
“Postol isn’t anything big; he boxes well but that’s it,” said Matthysse. “I saw part of his fight against Selcuk Aydin. Postol is tall like John Molina, but Molina came to fight. Postol, I don’t think so. He moves his left very well, fights at a distance, seems fast on his feet, and has excellent head movement. Against Aydin he got off to a slow start but then dominated and got the knockout. He’s good, but I’m confident that I’ll be the WBC World Champion.”
Postol will very likely look to take a page out of the playbook that Danny Garcia created in how to beat Matthysse by using movement, jabs, holding, and possibly even low blows to keep Matthysse under control. In the last four rounds of the Matthysse-Garcia fight, Garcia made it very difficult for Matthysse to get near him due to his movement, jabbing, clinching and low blows.
When Matthysse would catch up to Garcia, he would grab him and tie him up to keep him from throwing anything. Matthysse was fighting a moving target and that made it very difficult for him to get his shots off, and it was even more difficult to watch because it became a very boring fight to watch.
It was no pure excitement unless you like watching movement and clinching all night long. Postol moves even more than Garcia so that could be a very difficult fight for Matthysse unless he’s improved at cutting off the ring. It would be best for Matthysse to train against someone that moves really well for him to get ready for this fight because if he can’t cut off the ring on Postol, then he’ll have no chance of winning. Postol is just good at moving and he throws a lot of punches on the move.
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