By Chris Robinson
With WBA/WBC junior welterweight champion Danny Garcia pulling out of his Feb. 9 date with Zab Judah at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the entire junior welterweight division is feeling the effect of the fight being rescheduled.
And while Garcia now sets his sights towards an April 27th clash with Judah, one man who had been eyeing the Philadelphia native, interim WBC champion Lucas Matthysse, now seems to be without an even more unclear forecast of what his 2013 calendar year will encompass.
Matthysse impressed this past weekend with a chilling fist round knockout over Mike Dallas Jr. inside of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If Garcia does beat Judah, a rematch with Amir Khan seems a strong possibility for later in the year. And despite Matthysse going on record earlier this week by claiming that a match with his countryman Marcos Maidana isn’t of extreme interest to him, that exact fight may become one of Lucas’ biggest options.
Speaking with respected Showtime analyst Steve Farhood after this weekend’s action, I got his take on Matthysse’s performance, why he may have been fueled by his previous losses, and the possibility of a Maidana encounter.
Read below for Farhood’s thoughts..
Matthysse starching Dallas Jr. in under one round…
“Well, fantastic knockout. We’re in January and clearly that’s going to be a candidate for Knockout of the Year, because it was a one-punch knockout and violent. But in terms of the big picture, I don’t think Matthysse did himself much good tonight. Because people are going to look at him and say ‘Do I really want to fight this guy?’ He’s not a superstar yet in America and it’s so high-risk and maybe not the reward you should get to fight a guy like that. If I’m Danny Garcia, I might say ‘Do I really need this?’ The public will want to see more of Matthysse and they want to see him in the big fights. Bu the other junior welterweights, I’m not sure how they’re going to feel about it.”
Why Matthysse may have been motivated by his debatable split-decision losses to Devon Alexander and Zab Judah…
“In boxing, there’s losing and there’s losing. How you lose is very significant. He lost two very close decisions and in both fights he had his opponents on the floor. Guys who are championship fighters, Devon Alexander and Zab Judah. I think it did fuel him a little bit. And maybe he thought ‘I don’t want to go through this again’ and that it was time to get rid of these guys.”
The possibility of Matthysse vs. Maidana…
“Well, Matthysse-Maidana, I think the key to the fight is where does it take place? If it’s in America because that’s where the money is, that’s one thing. If it’s in Argentina, you can do a checking of history; that would be the biggest fight in the history of Argentina. They’ve had better fighters than Maidana and Matthysse, like Carlos Monzon, but two Argentineans fighting in Argentina, that would be the biggest fight you could make. I don’t know what the economy is there, I don’t know if they could hold it, but that would be a tremendous fight and a tremendous action fight, because Maidana is a little bit bigger than Matthysse, he’s a full welterweight now, and he’s got tremendous power also.”
CLICK below for exclusive photos from the Matthysse vs. Dallas event in Las Vegas…
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Chris Robinson can be reached at Trimond@aol.com