Quillen / Haymon KO Zerafa 09-12-15

Forget the Daniel Jacobs and Peter Quillen drama for a minute. We all know Al Haymon has had this middle weight matchup brewing for a while.

In fact, it might have been a done deal had Peter Quillen defeated Andy Lee on April 12, 2015. Instead, Quillen needed a Haymon "draw" to avoid what many observers felt was a loss.

In an effort to improve Quillen's status on the Premier Boxing Championship network, Al Haymon setup him up to fight an unknown 23-year old from Australia, Michael Zerafa (17-2).

In order for Peter Quillen to bounce back he needed a convincing win. Haymon and Company accommodated Quillen by contracting the fight at 163 pounds, in case he had weight issues again.

Unsurprisingly, Zerafa was knocked out in the 5th round. The young fighter had his moments in the third and fourth rounds, moving around and landing some clean shots. However, the success was short lived as the young fighter’s confidence grew and he began exchanging with the much bigger and stronger Quillen. This lead to the brutal 5th round KO.

Quillen was able to conduct his post-interview while Zerafa was carted off in a stretcher to a hospital for “precautionary measures”. Commentators kept mentioning just how bad he looked as he was taken out of the arena.

The biggest issue I had with this mismatch was simply, if you are not fighting someone the same class as you why give the star fighter a weight advantage? Quillen was able to rehydrate 20-25 pounds in one night. Inevitably this will lead to a severe injury and only then will people scrutinize the shady tactics of the promotor and sanctioning bodies who setup the fight.

PBC Announcer, Marv Albert, made the same comments on air. Good for him. Let the truth be known before someone is really hurt. Fight fans want to see competitive fight knock outs, not slaughter mis-match knockouts that are dangerous and take away from our beloved sport.

Don’t get me wrong. This problem is not only limited to Al Haymon and his group of fighters. I wrote about this with Nicholas Walters who is promoted by Top Rank and HBO.

The Featherweight Champion in his last fight failed to make weight. He came in with a huge weight advantage and eventually won his last fight against a tough Columbian fighter. The key difference was his opponent was on the same level skill-wise. The weight advantage was shameful but at least the fight wound up being pretty competitive. Clearly, this was not the case with Quillen vs. Zarafa fight.

I wish Zerafa nothing but the best and hope things looked worse than they really were. The money and "spot light" in this instance was simply not worth it. Inconvenient Truth.