Garcia beats Peterson by majority decision; Quillin, Lee fight to draw
Unified junior welterweight champion Danny Garcia beat light welterweight Lamont Peterson by majority decision Saturday night at the Barclays Center in a non-title fight.
Garcia (30-0) remained unbeaten by getting two scores of 115-113. A third judge ruled the fight to be a draw at 114-114.
When they last were in Brooklyn on Aug. 9, Garcia easily had a second-round knockout over Rod Salka while Peterson (33-3-1) went 10 rounds with Edgar Santana before the fight was stopped. Both sides had expressed the hope that they would fight each other sometime last year or this year.
That fight was announced on Jan. 14 as part of NBC's prime-time boxing series, but about a month ago, Garcia said that he did not have sufficient time to make the mandatory 140-pound weight. That resulted in Garcia's fourth fight in this building also being his second straight non-title fight since winning majority decision over Mauricio Herrera in Puerto Rico in March 2014.
Even if there was not a title on the line, Garcia had the backing of most of the crowd, who watched him come on strong with right hands and combinations in the early rounds. In the fourth round, he smirked at Peterson as if saying, ''Come on hit me.'' By the middle rounds, Garcia resumed hitting Peterson with a series of hard shots while the crowd chanted his name.
Peterson finally showed some aggressiveness in the eighth that forced Garcia near the ropes. In the ninth, the action took place in the middle of the ring and Garcia landed a hard left uppercut early on. At one point, Peterson made a motion of a windup, withstood a few hard rights before finishing the ninth aggressively.
In the 10th, Peterson danced around the ring and Garcia mockingly took a few steps but was still unable to get any traction with his punches. In the 11th, Garcia appeared to push Peterson to the canvas with his right glove and then absorbed several body shots. By the end of the round both fighters were wildly running around the edge of the ring.
The fight ended with both fighters still swinging wildly drawing ''oohs and aahs'' from the crowd. Garcia used a series of uppercuts but Peterson counted with some of his own. In the final minute, both continued swinging wildly and the fight ended with the fans giving the fighters a standing ovation from the largest boxing crowd in the 2 1/2 year history of the building.
In the other televised non-title fight, middleweight Peter Quillin (31-0-1) returned to the ring for the first time in nearly a year and fought Ireland's Andy Lee (34-2-1) to a draw. Judge Guido Cavalleri awarded the fight to Lee with a 113-112 score, judge Eric Marlinski gave it to Quillin by the same score and judge Glenn Feldman's 113-113 ruling led to the draw.
Quillin took nearly a year off due to the death of his uncle and birth of his child. In his return, he started strong, knocking Lee to the canvas in the first with a hard right hook and dropping him in the third round with a hard left hand shot across the back of his head.
