Should Lucas Matthysse win on Saturday night against Viktor Postol, he may be in line for Fighter of the Year consideration. He is coming off a possible Fight of the Year candidate with the Siberian Rocky, Ruslan Provodnikov. In talking with ESPN.com’s Brian Campbell, he said it was one of his toughest fights ever.
“Yes, definitely that fight has been the hardest of my career so far,” Matthysse said. “Basically, I had to adapt to Ruslan’s style and show people that I can box. Ruslan took a lot of damage from me and a lot of beating, but he was very resilient. I’m just happy I had such a great fight against someone that I respect.”
For all of his accolades, Matthysse has never won a world title. Should he beat Postol, he’d be the 140 lb. WBC champion and it’s something that has driven him to this point.
“I’m excited to fight for the world title and very happy to be fighting against the No. 1 contender for the title. I want to fight the best fighters. That’s what is happening on [Saturday] and I’m just happy to be fighting for another world title.”
Matthysse is one of the few who showed loyalty to Golden Boy with the mass exodus of Al Haymon fighters becoming free of promotional contracts and fighting on PBC. He says loyalty is important to him
“I have always felt a great support with Golden Boy, and I consider them as family,” Matthysse said. “I have always had great fights here and with everyone feeling like family to me, that’s why I wanted to say.”
He does want a rematch with a PBC fighter, and that’s Danny Garcia.
“I think about this fight all the time. I consider Danny a great fighter and one of the best. I would definitely like to fight him again. But what happened that night was I couldn’t see out of one eye, and that was the problem. One of my eyes was closed, and that was what really gave Danny the advantage. I was fighting with just one eye.”
