Golden Boy Promotions vice president Eric Gomez says he’s going to look to see if he can put together a unification match between IBF light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson and WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (29-0, 17 KOs) for either later this year or in 2015.
Both fighters were involved in a couple of sick mismatches last Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Garcia stopped lightweight Rod Salka (19-4, 3 KOs) in 2 rounds after knocking him down repeatedly on three separate occasions. Peterson had his own mismatch in #13 IBF Edgar Santana, who he battered unmercifully for 10 rounds until the ringside doctor stopped the fight himself.
“We’ve talked about it,” Gomez said via Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “[Garcia is] available and he’s willing to fight him. Lamont said he wants to fight Danny. It’s a fight we’re going to talk about [for] this year, early next year, whatever.”
Garcia seemed unwilling to commit to the Peterson fight though when interviewed by Showtime’s Jim Gray after the fight. Garcia said it was up to his adviser Al Haymon about whom his next opponent will be. That’s not a good sign unfortunately because it looks like Haymon is trying to showcase Garcia as much as possible in order to build him up for a shot at Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Garcia’s last two fights against Salka and Mauricio Herrera were transparent attempts to showcase him. Garcia looked horrible against Herrera, which led Haymon to find Salka from the lightweight division for him to show off his talent and look good against.
It would be nice to see Garcia matched against Peterson after last night’s horrible fight card, but it doesn’t see like it’s going to happen given the way Haymon is matching Garcia. If it was about entertaining the fans and increasing Garcia’s popularity, Haymon could have put Garcia back in with either Lucas Matthysse or Herrera. But it looks like he’s going in a different direction, and that seems to be to make Garcia look as good as possible until he gets the Mayweather fight.
“I came here and did what I was supposed to do,” said Garcia. “Puerto Rico was an off night for me. This was Danny Garcia at his best. Anyone would have gotten knocked out tonight.”
It would have been nice to see Garcia prove that his performance against Herrera was just an off night by him facing him again instead of being moved forward against Salka.
The way that Haymon matched Garcia against Salka, it was almost as if this was a rebuilding fight for Garcia after a loss. It was really odd match-making by Haymon. But I do believe this is an effort to make sure that Garcia doesn’t lose before the Mayweather fight, and that he’s made to look invincible for the casual boxing fans, which don’t have a clue about who Salka was or how he was pulled from the lightweight division for this fight.
