Peter Quillin gives fair reasons for his choice to vacate

By James Sexton - 02/25/2015 - Comments

In a pretty personal interview with Tha Boxing Voice, Peter Quillin gave some other reasons as to why he chose to vacate his WBO title, only to then do a 360 and opt to then fight for it again. Many fans saw this as an outrageous move by Quillin and his team, as well as his manager Al Haymon, in avoiding the undefeated mandatory Matt Korobov.

I wanted to make this article as I was one of many who slammed Quillin for his moves and the WBO as a whole for allowing this to happen, however after watching this interview it would seem that maybe there was more to the eye than the ducking of Korobov, although knowing Haymon this was certainly the main objective.

Firstly Quillin discussed the birth of a new child. He said that he was told by people close to him that if he missed this time with his newborn, he would regret it. Due to this you can see why skipping out on family time for the toughest training camp of his life wouldn’t be an ideal case for him. Every fighter handles this period differently and you cannot really slight a man for it.

He then went on to discuss an uncle who was struggling with cancer at the time. He said that now the uncle had passed and he had attended the funeral he felt better about getting back in the gym and sparring and putting in the work, which was difficult for him before.

The culmination of these two major events in a mans life makes the decision much clearer now. I think the damage to his reputation is there, but nevertheless is he comes out on top against Lee and wins back his WBO title he won’t have missed out on much other than the claim that he was the first to beat Korobov, should he have been able to handle that bout. Hopefully he gets some bigger fights after this one as a Quillin vs Golovkin match up would be fantastic although I know it will never happen.

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