By Scott Gilfoid: The May 7th fight card headlined by Amir Khan vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez just took a major hit on Wednesday with Argentinian welterweight slugger Lucas Matthysse (37-4, 34 KOs) pulling out of the card due to a lingering eye injury to his left eye.
The 34-year-old Matthysse suffered a fractured left orbital bone in his left fight against Viktor Postol last October in a failed attempt by Matthysse to win the vacant WBC light welterweight title. The idea was for Matthysse to fight Mauricio Herrera on the Canelo-Khan HBO pay-per-view card from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Golden Boy Promotions will need to really beef up the undercard if they want to make sure that the fight brings in a lot of pay-per-view buys on HBO. Recent years, we’ve had some promoters take a cavalier approach to undercards, saying they don’t matter because it’s the main event that the fans purchase PPV cards for. I’m not a believer in that mindset. I think undercards DO MATTER, and it’s not a good thing that the Canelo vs. Khan card no longer has Matthysse fighting on the card.
Interim WBA heavyweight champion Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz could be added to the card, but he might not help the card unless Golden Boy can find him a live body to fight. Hunting down another 44-year-old form Ortiz to fight might not attract much interest from fans. Golden Boy needs a live body for Ortiz, preferably someone a little younger than his last opponent Tony Thompson.
There has been rumors lately that Matthysse will be retiring from the sport. Golden Boy Promotions vice president Eric Gomez says Matthysse isn’t retiring. He says he’ll just be resting for a few months to let his injured left eye to heal.
“He [Matthysse] was training and getting ready for the fight, but he felt some discomfort in his eye and he wants more rest,” said Golden Boy Promotions vice president Eric Gomez to ESPN.com. “He’s not going to fight on May 7. He is going to rest more but he is not retiring,” Gomez said. “Mario talked to him about it. What Lucas is going to do is rest, take some more time for his eye to heal and see how it is. In a few months we’ll see how he’s doing and go from there.”
We’ll see what happens with Matthysse and his injured eye. I think it’s a good idea for him to rest, because Matthysse was involved in a war last year in April against Ruslan Provodnikov. Matthysse won that fight by a 12 round majority decision, but he took a lot of punishment in that fight. Provodnikov had Matthysse hurt on at least two occasions in the second half of that contest. In hindsight, it was a really bad idea to have Matthysse come back from that fight just six months later to fight Viktor Postol in October of 2015. With the punishment that Matthysse took in the Provodnikov fight, it would have been better to let Matthysse take a couple of easy fights six months apart to recover from the war before putting him in with the likes of Postol.
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