Now that we’ve all been able to absorb last weekend’s “PBC” main event on NBC it is safe to say that nothing has been agreed upon and the nature of Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson’s controversy is still as debatable as it was in Brooklyn that night. I admit that I’m surprised at the number of people that believe Peterson won the fight, but I’m even more shocked that so many consider the fight a robbery.
If you feel Peterson deserved the nod by a round or two because it was a closely fought contest at certain points in the fight, mostly late, then I can understand that, but to call it a robbery is to declare Peterson the winner by an obvious degree of separation from Garcia. Furthermore, a robbery suggests that Peterson’s performance was clearly better than Garcia’s, both esthetically and completely.
I don’t believe Peterson won the fight, but I can admit that he closed the gap in the later rounds. I don’t know if Garcia let Peterson back into the fight or if Peterson willed his way back into the fight, but that has little to do with the overall outcome. It would’ve been a much different perception if Garcia closed the show differently with a more controlled performance, but that doesn’t mean that Peterson deserved the nod, and it certainly doesn’t mean it was a robbery to award Garcia the fight.
Still, I understand that some people thought Peterson did enough to dig himself out of the self-made hole he dug himself into in the first place. Paulie Malignaggi is one of those people that believes the fight was close enough that an argument can be made for Peterson as the night’s victor.
“It was a really good fight, I guess the judges felt that Lamont gave away too many of the early rounds. It was a close fight. I can see how people would think that, but my question is I don’t know if you should reward Danny Garcia [for] not being able to cut off the ring early on in the fight,” Malignaggi told Thaboxingvoice.com.
Malignaggi was more impressed with Lamont’s efforts through the limited amount of time in which he actually threw punches than Garcia’s weak hold over the larger portion of the fight. Basically, Malignaggi felt Peterson impressed by doing more in a smaller portion of time and that it was enough to beat Garcia who controlled a larger portion of the fight with a much weaker performance.
“Yeah, Lamont didn’t do a lot, but Danny also couldn’t track him down in order to do a lot, and from that perspective when the roles were switched and it was Danny going backwards late in the fight, Lamont was cutting the ring off and forcing Danny to fight when he didn’t want to fight. I think that’s important. I guess in the eyes of the judges [Peterson] got off to too late a start and that’s how it works, it was a very close fight.”
I agree with Malignaggi’s take that Peterson did more with limited time, but I agree with it most of all because it proves my point that Garcia deserved the win without the controversy tag branded on the fight. The bottom line is boxing is scored on a “10 point must” system and barley winning a round earns as much as decisively winning a round, barring any knockdowns.
Peterson may have looked better during the rounds he won, but Garcia did enough to win more rounds. If boxing was scored by considering the fight overall then Peterson has an argument, but he simply started too late and couldn’t win the fight at the moment he actually started fighting, at least not without a series of knockdowns.
There has been a significant demand from fans and media for a rematch, and Malignaggi agrees with that notion. However, he would like the rematch to occur in the weight class that the fight originally belonged and he believes that titles would only amplify the appeal for a part two.
“I think they should do a rematch and this helps them both, it helps boxing, it helps everything. This was a great fight at the end of the day, good action once things heated up. If you just do a rematch I don’t see how either guy could really be effected in a negative way. Do it again. If you can still make light welter do a rematch and make it for all the titles and then you’ll really making something special because you’ll have an anticipated rematch with what was a really good, controversial fight and you’ll have all the titles on the line as well.”
I doubt we get a rematch, and I’m fine to move on without one. Peterson got his chance and he doesn’t really deserve a second one based on his late fight epiphany. Despite how strongly people feel, it wasn’t all that entertaining a fight. It certainly had its moments, but it dramatically lacked at times and a rematch should be based on something more compelling than a fighter figuring out you have to actually fight to win, and not on titles that weren’t worthy enough for consideration in the first fight.
