Friday, March 29, 2024  |

News

Aficianado

Postol-Matthysse ordered after Danny Garcia vacates WBC title

Fighters Network
12
Jun

After consecutive bouts fought at a catchweight and not defending the WBC title in over a year, Danny Garcia did what many thought was long overdue.

After speaking with World Boxing Council president Mauricio Sulaiman, Garcia agreed to relinquish the WBC junior welterweight title.

In a press release sent out on Thursday, the WBC declared the title vacant and has ordered a bout between Viktor Postol and Lucas Matthysse to be made.

“Postol has been the division’s mandatory contender and had registered with the WBC a step aside agreement with several provisions, all of which were complied with to his benefit,” read the statement. “.. and since the Postol-Garcia fight will not happen, then Postol will fight Matthysse, who won the right by beating Ruslan Provodnikov, and the fight will be for the WBC undisputed [140-pound] championship.”



While waiting for the Garcia fight to materialize Postol took a tune-up bout in April against Jake Giuriceo, whom he defeated by unanimous decision over eight rounds.

Postol’s manager, Vadim Kornilov, welcomed the decision made by the WBC to declare the title vacant.

“It’s great news,” Kornilov stated in an email to RingTV late Thursday night. “We were expecting that we were just being dragged along and Garcia never wanted to actually defend the title.

“It’s great that the WBC finally made the decision to put the title to work and now Matthysse and Postol will be fighting for the title this fall. We already know that Matthysse wants the title and will fight anybody, so I am pretty sure we will now be able to put together this title opportunity for Postol.”

Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs), who is currently the RING champion at 140 pounds, won the WBC title in March of 2012 by defeating Erik Morales. In his fifth and ultimately his last defense of the WBC title, Garcia won a controversial 12-round majority decision over Mauricio Herrera in March of last year.

Almost five months later, Garcia knocked out Rod Salka in the second round and, in his last bout on April 11, won a 12-round majority decision over Lamont Peterson. Both were non-title fights above the 140-pound limit.

It has been reported that Garcia’s next fight will be at welterweight against Paulie Malignaggi on Aug. 1 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, which will be broadcast on ESPN as part of Premier Boxing Champions.

Matthysse is currently ranked No. 2 by the WBC and is coming off a thrilling 12-round decision win over Ruslan Provodnikov on Apr. 18.

Francisco A. Salazar has written for RingTV since October of 2013 and has covered boxing in Southern California and abroad since 2000. Francisco also covers boxing for the Ventura County (CA) Star newspaper, Boxingscene.com, and Knockout Nation. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter at FSalazarBoxing

SIGN UP TO GET RING NEWS ALERTS