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Credit:  Photos by Angela Cranford / Barclays Center /

Article by Martin Domin /

 

 

  • Andy Lee defends the world title he won against Matt Korobov last year
  • The Irishman has had a renaissance working under Adam Booth
  • But Lee faces a tough challenge in unbeaten former champion Peter Quillin
  • Lee insists he is ready for whatever ‘Kid Chocolate’ can throw at him

Andy Lee is confident he has improved even further since winning his world title last year.

The Irishman makes the first defence of his WBO middleweight belt against Peter Quillin in New York on Saturday.

And he is confident he is ready for anything the former champion has in his locker.

‘We’ve made unbelievable progress in the last year on my skills and everything has really just clicked for me and my team and now we’re seeing the results in the ring,’ Lee said.

‘I’m very proud to be an Irishman from Limerick defending his world championship in New York, it doesn’t get much better than that.

‘There’s been a huge weight lifted off my shoulders since winning the world title. It’s what I always wanted to do and I’ve been touted as a champion for years and if I never got it I would have been disappointed. Now the monkey is off my back and I can just box and show people who I am.

‘We’ve made physical and tactical improvements in the gym since the last fight and hopefully they’ll show up in the ring on Saturday.

‘I think this could be a technical fight or it could be a bit of a fire fight. It’s going to be a little of both at times. There will be moments where we’re looking at each other, figuring each other out, but once we exchange it could be explosive.

‘Quillin is sure of himself, but he has to be, I have the same mentality. You have to be to compete in this sport.

‘Fighting at home like Quillin is on Saturday, brings a different kind of pressure to the table, it’s the pressure of expectations and people you know coming to the fights. That’s also pressure and I know all about that.

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‘I haven’t needed to build up my confidence for this fight. It’s not time to think. It’s time to do what I’ve been doing every day in the gym.’

Quillin, meanwhile, believes the fight will just be another struggle he has to overcome.

‘I never trailed in a fight and came back and won like Lee. I’ve just won all the time right out of the gate. Those other guys aren’t ‘Kid Chocolate’ so I think that’s why this fight was made,’ he said.

‘It’s a big fight for him and a big fight for me. He’s a smart fighter when he’s in trouble so I have to watch out for that. Most importantly I just need to be true to myself.

‘A lot of people had Lee as the underdog in his last fight but he came out and did great. That’s the thing about boxing; one punch can change the fight.

‘I’m getting paid for 12 rounds so I’m preparing for 12 rounds but if I can get him out of there early I will.

‘My whole life has been struggles and I’ve had to overcome every single one of those struggles. This is going to be no different from that.

‘Being a father of course made me more inspired and watching my uncle pass has made me more motivated than ever to accomplish everything I want.

‘When I gave up the belt I learned that I can be a bigger man and make tough decisions like that all of the time. People think losing is easy, but winning all the time is a different kind of pressure.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/boxing/article-3029890/Andy-Lee-confident-hand-Peter-Quillin-defeat-retain-world-title.html

 

Peter Quillin

“Kid Chocolate” Peter Quillin vacated his middleweight world title and kissed a career-high $1.4 million purse goodbye on Thursday.

He was faced with a WBO-imposed deadline of 4 p.m. ET on Thursday to sign a contract for his mandatory defense against Matt Korobov. Quillin, who had already been given two extensions to the signing deadline, would have been stripped of his title had he not vacated.

It still comes as a surprise to many that Quillin, whose wife gave birth to their first child, a boy, about a week ago, would turn down a purse that is more than three times his biggest payday and give up his title without having another fight signed.

Peter Quillin
Peter Quillin vacated his middleweight world title on Thursday, and in turn, lost out on a career-high $1.4 million purse.

“I’d like to thank WBO president Paco Valcarcel and his organization for their support throughout the years,” Quillin said in a statement. “Winning the WBO world championship was a highlight in my career and something I’ll never forget. This is a difficult decision, but in order to make the fights the fans and I want against my fellow middleweights at the top of the division, I needed to relinquish the title.

“This is an exciting new chapter in my life, and I’m looking forward to cementing my spot as the best middleweight in the world.”

Quillin’s statement rings a bit hollow because there is no obvious major middleweight fight on the horizon for him.

Fights with champion Miguel Cotto and titlist Gennady Golovkin were not possible. Only a match with fellow New Yorker Daniel Jacobs, who owns a lightly regarded secondary title and, like Quillin, is advised by the powerful Al Haymon, would be close.

About a half hour before the deadline, Arnold Joseph, the attorney for Golden Boy Promotions, Quillin’s promoter, sent a letter to the WBO informing it of the decision.

“Mr. Quillin has reviewed the middleweight landscape and is of the belief that there are other more compelling opponents for him to fight which will afford the boxing fans with excitement and which will afford him and his family more opportunities,” Joseph wrote. “Please be assured that Mr. Quillin is by no means minimizing Mr. Korobov’s talents or accomplishments. Mr. Quillin simply seeks to pursue bigger fights. Let me conclude by expressing Mr. Quillin and Golden Boy’s appreciation for your organization’s patience while Mr. Quillin worked through this decision and we look forward to our continued relationship with the WBO.”

Quillin’s decision means that the first boxing event to be promoted by Roc Nation Sports, the sports agency founded by music mogul Jay Z, will be delayed. Roc Nation Sports announced its intentions to promote boxing two weeks ago and the next day won a purse bid for the right to promote Quillin-Korobov, even though it doesn’t have promotional contracts with either fighter.

It bid $1,904,840, a dramatic overbid that easily beat Golden Boy ($1,207,000) and Korobov promoter Top Rank ($515,000). Quillin would have earned a career-best $1,428,630 to Korobov’s career-best $476,210. Korobov signed almost immediately while Quillin asked for extensions.

Roc Nation Sports planned to put the fight on Nov. 1 at the Barclays Center in Quillin’s hometown of Brooklyn, but had since notified Golden Boy and Top Rank that it would instead have been at the DC Armory in Washington, D.C., because Korobov is not licensed in New York due to a medical issue no other state has a problem with.

Michael Yormark, president and chief of branding and strategy for parent company Roc Nation, was disappointed Quillin turned down the fight.

“I’ve got $1.4 million sitting next to me,” Yormark told ESPN.com. “Do you want it? It’s puzzling that he turned down $1.4 million and gave up his belt. In order to turn down that money and give up his belt he has to be looking at a bigger opportunity. Who turns $1.4 million and gives up his belt for nothing?

“We wish him the best of luck. We like Peter a lot. We hope he’s made the right decision here, but it’s puzzling. I’m sure (Haymon) sat down and discussed this with him in detail. Peter has a team around him he listens to and we can only assume the direction he received was to pass. We wish him the best of luck and we hope he has an incredible payday in front of him because that’s the only justification for turning down $1.4 million and giving up his belt.”

Said Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti, “I’m sorry that Roc Nation Sports had to be put through this process. It’s disappointing for all of us, especially when a new player such as Jay Z wants to get involved in our sport. I hope this has no bearing on their future plans. As far as Top Rank goes, we look forward to working with them in any future endeavors.”

Yormark said Roc Nation Sports’ interest in boxing isn’t going anywhere.

“We will continue to look at all opportunities,” he said. “We continue to march forward. We’re in this for the long term. We’re disappointed but it’s not the end. We’re just getting started.

“This just motivates us even more. We knew we were getting into an industry we’d have to navigate through carefully. We hoped to have this first fight in November and it didn’t happen. But we’ll continue to be aggressive and move forward. We’re not going away.”

Korobov’s side was also disappointed.

“We’re disappointed that Peter Quillin didn’t respect the rules,” Moretti said. “Matt will still get his opportunity to fight for the title thanks to the WBO. We’re just really disappointed in Peter Quillin as a fighter. If he thinks that fighting Danny Jacobs for a secondary title is better than this opportunity than so be it. Why he couldn’t he have done both? If he’s that good he could have fought Matt and then Danny Jacobs. He must not have the confidence in himself, or his team doesn’t have confidence in him, that he would relinquish the title that he worked hard to earn.”

Quillin (31-0, 22 KOs), 31, defended the title three times, most recently by near-shutout decision against Lukas Konecny in Washington, D.C., on April 19.

Korobov (24-0, 14 KOs), a 31-year-old Russian southpaw and a 2008 Olympian, scored a pair of seventh-round knockdowns against Jose Uzcategui en route to a 10-round decision victory in his last fight on June 28 in Omaha, Nebraska in his HBO debut.

Korobov will get a shot at the vacant title next, possibly against Billy Joe Saunders, a 2008 Olympian from England. The 25-year-old Saunders (20-0, 11 KOs) is the WBO’s next ranked contender.

http://espn.go.com/espn/print?id=11466721&type=story

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By Thomas Gerbasi –

(Photo:  Boxeo Mundial.com)

Boxing’s loquacious elder statesman Bernard Hopkins may be headlining Saturday night’s Showtime card at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City against Karo Murat, but it’s the young man in the co-main event, WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin who described life at the top of the boxing world better than even “The Executioner” could.

“I had to learn how to deal with it,” said ‘Kid Chocolate’ when asked if he was comfortable being the fighter now with a target on his back placed there by his fellow 160-pounders. “Even my friends will want to fight me because I have the belt, and I have to respect that and learn what being a champion is all about. So I don’t look at it as being comfortable; I don’t think life as a fighter can be comfortable because I’m on the borderline of sanity and insanity doing what I’m doing. It’s like a big mental game that I’m playing with myself, and that’s what boxing is all about. I fight through so much BS to live through good moments of my life, like being a winner, inspiring kids, and showing somebody that they can be what they want to be. So I can never be comfortable. And especially coming from where I come from, I could never be comfortable. I always wanted more; I was always working towards being a better person.”

Despite being less than comfortable at the top, it’s evident that he has made it, both in boxing and in life, though neither seems to be letting up in throwing curveballs at him. The ones in the ring are easy enough for him to deal with, considering that he only has to face one man with two fists in sanctioned combat every few months. The ones outside the ring, they’re always tougher to deal with simply because you never see them coming.

Heading into Saturday’s bout with Gabriel Rosado, Quillin is still heavy-hearted after his wife suffered a miscarriage of their child earlier this month, but he’s put on a brave face and made it clear that this won’t affect his performance on fight night. Granted, it’s not easy to deal with, but if anyone can persevere, it’s the New Yorker who was once homeless as he looked to make his fistic dreams become a reality.

Today, he’s got a world title belt in his possession and a bright future in a hot division. But the road to get better doesn’t end, something you don’t have to tell him twice.

“I’m just glad to be positive and learn about myself and inspire people,” said the 30-year-old. “It’s been a road to remember. I would have never thought I’d be where I’m at right now. I’m just glad that I can be evidence of what hard work can get you.”

Want more evidence? Less than a month after Saturday’s fight, Quillin will be taking the last test to earn his GED. You might wonder why an established world champion with the potential to make millions in the coming years and set himself and his family up for life would do such a thing, but Quillin is more curious why you would even wonder why.

“How can I tell kids to stay in school and don’t be a fool when I’m sitting around here without my education?” he said. “I took the hard road and boxing fell into my hand and became such a passion, but I look back and what I would want to promote to my kids is having an education. It’s something that I thought was a very responsible thing to do, and I’ve been working hard to do it, but with such a busy schedule, it’s been tough.”

Next month, that will be another item on the Quillin bucket list to check off. The first one on the current list? Keep his title, and that means vanquishing the always-tough Rosado.

“I look at him as just another guy I’m fighting, another personality, another style that I’m gonna learn right there in the ring, and I can never say that I’ve been in there with a person like Gabriel Rosado,” said Quillin, who just celebrated his one year anniversary as champion on October 20th.

On that 2012 night in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Quillin put France’s Hassan N’Dam down six times en route to a 12 round unanimous decision victory. Six months later, Fernando Guerrero visited the deck four times before being stopped by Quillin in the seventh round. The win over Guerrero lifted Quillin’s pro record to 29-0 (21 KOs) and established him as one of those fighters you will make sure you’re watching whenever he’s on television. New York fans always knew this about their hometown favorite, but the rest of the world was slow to catch on, leaving Quillin on the outside looking in for longer than most.

“I tried not to worry about the guys before me that were getting opportunities that I felt I wasn’t getting,” he said. “I just had to let them worry about their own stuff and I worried about my own. I figured my time was gonna come, and I would have to appreciate it.”

Signing with Golden Boy Promotions and winning a June 2012 bout against Winky Wright finally accelerated the process for him, and when matched with N’Dam, he made the most of his opportunity. Today, he refuses to look back.

“Now it’s my time, and I’m appreciating everything that’s going on,” he said. “When it comes to the past, it’s like bumps in the road when you’re in a car. You go over a bump and you’re like ‘damn, that was big,’ but eventually, when you get to see the bump, it’s in your rearview, and the further you go, the bump disappears. So I stay in my present, don’t worry too much about the future, and forget about the past. And now, I have to work even harder.”

If he gets by Rosado, that will be another win, another paycheck, and another step toward bigger fights. At middleweight, the established champion is Sergio Martinez, the heir apparent is Gennady Golovkin, and the dark horse of the championship quartet is Darren Barker. Fights for Quillin against any of those three are appealing, even if promotional and television ties may make them pipe dreams at the moment. But as far as Quillin is concerned, he’s a firm believer that things find a way of eventually working themselves out.

“The mind is a powerful thing and if you use it to your advantage, you can see huge rewards from it,” he said. “Back then I may have had penny thoughts, but I always had million dollar dreams.”

Now it’s time to cash in on those dreams.

http://www.boxingscene.com/peter-quillin-long-road-glory-continues–70973

 

 

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Article Link – http://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&opt=printable&id=70931#ixzz2ikxfHfi3
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by Cliff Rold

Sergio Martinez (51-2-2, 28 KO) remains the true Middleweight Champion of the World.

He may not be the best Middleweight in the world anymore.

In the span of eight days, we will see the two strongest ‘heirs apparent’ to his throne and either might be favored to beat the 38-year old Argentine right now.  The louder hype, for the moment, centers on Kazakhstan’s 2004 Olympic Silver Medalist Gennady Golovkin (27-0, 24 KO).  The 31-year old has been a professional since 2006 and will attempt his ninth defense of a WBA belt, and sixth defense of the IBO belt, against Curtis Stevens (25-3, 18 KO) in New York next Saturday.

This Saturday, the spotlight falls on the less hyped, but in many ways equally impressive, WBO titlist at 160 lbs.  30-year old Peter Quillin (29-0, 21 KO), fighting out of Brooklyn, turned professional in 2005 and has slowly developed into a dangerous fighter.  Borrowing a nickname from one of the greats of the 1930s, this “Kid Chocolate” has shown sweet potential in his last four fights.

He will attempt to defend his belt for the second time against Gabriel Rosado (21-6, 13 KO).  Quillin is expected to win.

The biggest question: if he does as expected, what will it look like?

When all else fails, boxing is a sport happy to promote based on comparison-shopping of the eyes.  Rosado challenged Golovkin in January of this year and, while defeated, gave a spirited account and lasted into the seventh round.  Reports of Golovkin battling the flu notwithstanding, if Quillin can dispose of Rosado earlier, easier, he will have a feather in his cap of what should be seen as the division’s real developing rivalry.

Quillin doesn’t have Golovkin in front of him this weekend.  Instead, he engages in what can best be called a proxy war.

It’s one he’d be well served to win.  The accomplishment gap between Golovkin and Quillin, in terms of quality wins, isn’t that wide.  The perception gap is.

Given the curt circumstances of the relationships between HBO and Showtime, perception matters for Quillin.  He’s in a tough spot.  Both Golovkin and Martinez are tied, for the moment, to HBO.  Most of the best action in the division this year has taken place on that network.  The action from 140-154 lbs. is well spread between the two networks.

In those divisions, Showtime is drawing from the deeper pool and has the premiere draw in the sport, Floyd Mayweather, on their side.  It’s not so from 160-68, where HBO also has the legitimate World Super Middleweight Champion Andre Ward on their side and has aired some of his better challengers as well.

Quillin could become one of the bigger victims of this whole mess.  To be the man, one eventually has to beat him and Quillin is a fighter who needs flexibility in networks that may not be available to him right away.

In lieu of that, the proxy wars he can win are of immeasurable value.  They are pathways to create public demand for him to be more than the Showtime side of the Middleweight bracket.  It’s not like he runs out of foes after Rosado, should he win this weekend.  Daniel Jacobs (26-1, 23 KO), a cancer survivor, is a great story.  Resurgent since returning to action in 2004 and a fellow New Yorker, he could make a fine challenger next year.

Up one class, Showtime will air the 168 lb. title fight between WBC titlist Sakio Bika (32-5-2, 21 KO) and Anthony Dirrell (26-0, 22 KO) in December.  A move up the scale isn’t out of the question.

Opponents can emerge.  They aren’t Martinez, Golovkin, and Ward.

Short of Mayweather moving up to Quillin to attempt a title in a sixth weight class, Quillin may want to root for Al Haymon stablemate Edwin Rodriguez (24-0, 16 KO) to upset Ward (26-0, 14 KO).  That could shift some scales.

For the time being, all he can do is win.  He’s done that against a fair set of recent foes.  A breakthrough stoppage of fringe contender Craig McEwan in 2011 announced him as a serious comer.  Subsequent wins that halted the comeback of “Winky” Wright, sent the capable Hasan N’Dam N’Jikam to the canvas five times for a title, and a dominant knockout of Fernando Guerrero elevated Quillin.

Compare those wins to the best Golovkin has posted.  Is there really that big a gap in quality between N’Jikam and Matthew Macklin?  Is beating a faded Wright less an accomplishment than beating a faded Kasim Ouma?  McEwan…Grzegorz Proksa…six of one, half dozen of another.

Where Golovkin has an edge is in the spectacular nature of some of his victories.  Quillin has a chance to try to be more spectacular this weekend.

Sergio Martinez might still be history’s Middleweight king, but in the ring there is every reason to believe the fight for best Middleweight in the world right now is Golovkin-Quillin.  Politics are in the way.

Quillin has to make his case bigger than the politics.

 http://www.boxingscene.com/peter-kid-chocolate-quillins-proxy-war–70931      

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By:  Bryan Mazique –

Boxing fans will get another look at “Kid Chocolate,” Peter Quillin, (28-0, 20 KO) on Saturday night when he defends his WBO middleweight title for the first time against Dominican-American southpaw Fernando Guerrero (25-1, 19 KO).

The jury is still out whether Quillin is a legitimate threat to the lineal title at 160 pounds.

Not many experts would consider him on the same level as Sergio Martinez or Gennady Golovkin, but nevertheless, he holds one of the prominent championships in the weight class.

To his credit, he generally puts on an exciting show.

As part of the undercard on the Zab Judah-Danny Garcia lightweight championship bout, Quillin will attempt to entertain the Brooklyn crowd at the Barclays Center before the featured attraction.

This fight was supposed to happen in February, but it was postponed because the bout is married to the Garcia-Judah clash and Garcia was injured. Therefore, a postponement of the main event also delayed Quillin-Guerrero.

All are healthy and finally ready to get it on. Here’s how you can watch the night of fights.

When: Saturday, April 27, 9 p.m. ET

Where: Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y

TV: Showtime

Stream: Replay on Showtime Anytime

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1617401-peter-quillin-vs-fernando-guerrero-time-date-live-stream-replay-and-tv-info