“You win a few, you lose a few”, Matthysse stated. I didn’t plan to do that.
Advertisement
“I feel great about the win”, said Orozco.
Lucas Matthysse (37-3 34KO) vs. Viktor Postol (27-0 11KO): WBC Jr.
Matthysse still loves a good fistfight, but the Argentine showed surprisingly sharp boxing skills in his majority decision victory over Siberian slugger Ruslan Provodnikov earlier this year. “The Provodnikov fight and now this fight”.
This is the third fight that Postol has worked with famed trainer Freddie Roach, who called Postol his his “new favorite fighter”. He used his length and jab to keep Matthysse too far away to do any damage and holds to keep him from unloading at close range.
I think Broner would beat Postol if that fight took place.
When Lucas Matthysse knocked Lamont Peterson out in three shockingly devastating rounds, he was prematurely anointed as boxing’s untouchable, power-punching destroyer – the way Gennady Golovkin and Sergey Kovalev are now viewed.
The strategy Postol and his trainer, the famous Freddie Roach, put together proved to be highly effective.
“He had his night, I didn’t have my night”, said Matthysse. I’m going to continue to push myself in the ring, and that has always been my style. “This is what happens when the best fight the best”.
Since then, Matthysse has regrouped.
“He’s not the best”. “But he is the world champion tonight and I want to congratulate him”.
In the broader boxing melodrama, the fight was an audition for Matthysse in the Manny Pacquiao Sweepstakes.
Las Vegas Review-Journal informed that Top Rank CEO Bob Arum, who promotes the Filipino warrior, picks WBC Silver welterweight titlist Amir Khan as his top choice, followed by worldwide Boxing Federation welterweight titleholder Kell Brook or Matthysse.
Now it’s out of the question and unlikely that Arum will match Postol with Pacquiao for a number of reasons, including his lack of name recognition and the fact he is so much bigger than Pacquiao.
Yet, even the Argentine’s spot is not yet guaranteed, all he has to do is focus on a victory against Postol to hit two birds with one stone, so to speak. If Crawford wins, a unification fight with Postol would determine the de facto king of the division.
“It will be my pleasure to meet him in the ring”, Postol said of Crawford. Viktor Postol is unknown to the common fan, but is well known by the hard core.
So the pressure, once more, is on Matthysse to bring the fight to a crowd that will expect no less than the mayhem that routinely takes place at the StubHub. He hoped to get a shot at Garcia but chose to take a six-figure deal to step aside to allow Garcia to face Lamont Peterson in April.
The expectations should be sky-high for Postol after this bout. He entered the fight with close to 4-inch height edge.
“I felt like I dominated the fight throughout”, said Ramirez. “It has been something we have been working for my entire career”.
“If we train hard – and I’m very well prepared – we can have many wars”, Matthysse, 33, answered with a grin. That’s why I am so excited for this fight. Soto is a tough fighter. Let him come forward. “He came prepared and this was a great learning experience for me”. But it was yet another example of how an honest fighter has a rough go when he isn’t an anointed star. He is most likely on what is the tail end of his excellent career. In the night round, Orozco landed a left hook to the body, sending Soto to the canvas.
Advertisement
Matthysse seems long overdue to wear a world title belt for the first time in his ascendant career. When I’m not fighting or training, I get bored.
