Peter Quillin sat in the media room in Brooklyn, New York after defeating Hassan N’dam in October of 2012 with the WBO middleweight title placed directly in front of him. Quillin’s brother, a rapper named Sheddy, would serve as a hype man as well as talking to those near him about how proud he was of his brother’s achievements. Quillin wearing a Scandinavian sweater with a Kangol bucket hat sat in the press conference confidently taking shots at media members who belittled him prior to the fight and came across as a personality that most would soon be following as well as seemingly larger than life.
It was the night the world got to know the name Eric Brown of Wild Card Boxing Gym as Quillin and Paulie Malignaggi expressed praise for the beloved coach of Wild Card for their progress as fighters. It was a last minute push to get him a trainer of the year, but also a large thank you for the amount of investment put in. In the middle of the presser, N’dam would enter and begin to argue with Quillin as the then CEO of Golden Boy Promotions Richard Schaffer would explain to N’dam ,“The WBO does not do championship rematches.” This was after Quillin dropped N’dam six times, but still was in a very competitive fight on the scorecards.
Now let’s jump forward two years. Quillin is now viewed as, well, largely unproven. Since gaining the belt or should I say in past tense, had the belt, Quillin really had a forgettable run of foes. Quillin took a defense against Fernando Guerrero in a fight Guerrero was simply overmatched for. This bout was followed by a title defense against Gabriel Rosado, who despite the perception of Rosado at the time was coming off a loss to Gennady Golovkin and a loss to J’Leon Love that was later ruled a no contest after Love tested positive for banned substance to make the weight.
Quillin’s title run ended by defeating career junior middleweight Lukas Konecny at middleweight, who once again was outgunned, but surprised many with the success he was having particularly with right hand when Quillin was on the ropes. One thing that was noted during this time was, it appeared that Quillin may be fighting down to his level of opposition or even worse regressing. Quillin on Thursday afternoon vacated the WBO middleweight title refusing to fight Matt Korobov in a complicated soap opera like drama as Quillin turned down a reported 1.4 million dollar payday nearly tripling his highest grossing fight to date.
The Quillin-Korobov fight was scheduled for later this year in Brooklyn, NY, Quillin’s adopted hometown of sorts, but the purse bid was bought acquired by Roc Nation headed by rapper Jay Z. Quillin’s manager, Al Haymon, was sued by Jay Z’s wife Beyonce Knowles and the fact that after the lawsuit Haymon left the music industry and invested in boxing, adds some deeper context.
Now let’s go even deeper, Quillin would more than likely have had to fight on HBO as it appears that Jay Z’s first promotional endeavor will be on the aforementioned network. In 2013, Haymon moved all of his fighters to Showtime working with ShoSports VP Stephen Espinoza exclusively to such an extent that it appears Haymon fights that are not TV ready will be given the green light such as Danny Garcia vs. Rod Salka. The underlying theme is Quillin vacated his title out of orders from Al Haymon to screw up Jay Z’s initial attempt to enter the boxing business as well as make his 1.9 million investment in the event, an investment that would have trouble seeing a return.
To summarize a confusing statement that Quillin made this Thursday, Quillin essentially expressed joy as he stated that he would finally be able to fight the best in the division and now follow his dreams. Danny Jacobs and Gennady Golovkin were listed as possible foes. Realistically though do we expect to see Quillin vs. Golovkin, NO! If the Korobov fight could not happen then I largely doubt a higher risk fight for less money that would take place on HBO would occur. So in all reality it appears Danny Jacobs will fight Quillin in the not so distance future.
So where does Quillin go from here? Well, probably outside of the sport in the not so near future. Quillin recently was married to a very successful television producer and also this past week the couple had their first child. It is not hard to believe Quillin obtained all he need from the sport of boxing and could be looking to transition into entertainment and outside of boxing as whole. Quillin in the above allotted statement expressed he had big plans coming up. Who is to say that the big plans have to be in the realm of boxing, couldn’t they be outside as wel?
I think as boxing fans we have to take a step back and remember that not all boxers love the sport. Some boxers used the sport as conduit to create a better life and potentially Quillin used this very avenue to create a world he could have never dreamed for himself. The big problem is that the once endearing Quillin, now seems like a thing of the past as it seems like he is more or less a man buying his time until he clocks out to retire from the sport.
