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Hours before the Showtime PPV cameras started rolling, Gervonta Davis began to grab the attention of audiences at home and in person. She was one of the fighters Davis looked up to when she returned to the ring as a youth.
Nearly three years after deciding to step away from active competition, Lamont Peterson is back for a six-round match against Kenyan journeyman Michael Ogundo. Peterson never left his boxing trajectory, even after his final bout with Sergey Lipinets in March 2019, continuing to train alongside his brother Anthony and helping coach.Peterson has also long been seen as one of the mentors to the fighters that came after him, especially those who hail from or trained in the DC area. Although he channeled his own competitive spirit into long-distance running, he was his older brother, both literally and figuratively.
“Lamont Peterson, Anthony Peterson – they were homeless – they were great people at heart and taught me a lot about the sport. They, Mayweather and Adrian Bronner, have always been my top fighters.” In his first world title defense against Liam Walsh.
A year earlier, Lamont was in the locker room with him prior to Davis’ national television breakout performance on SpikeTV. Peterson was a big star at the time, headlining every major platform and hitting seven figures, while Davis was the chosen one under the learning tree of Peterson, Mayweather and others. bottom.
In 2023, Davis is one of the biggest players in sports to watch, and he can use his influence to help his friends in sports and, more specifically, give them their own card positions. Davis reportedly wanted the Peterson brothers to appear on the show with him, as his bout with Hector Luis Garcia was staged at his stomping grounds at the DMV, specifically Washington. Anthony’s scheduled bout fell through, but Lamont’s six-round shot of him against Ogundo was still undecided.
“When I came back to DC, I had to make sure the people who paved the way for me were on the cards,” Davis said at the pre-game press conference last week. Anthony) and Lamont Peterson, they’re definitely in the cards.
When asked about his return, Peterson looked rather disrespectful. As any runner knows, when you start wearing the Ciele Running Hat in a fashionable way, you’re a serious runner and you want others to know that. At the press conference, Peterson was wearing his running cap.
“At his request, I’m going to do it,” Peterson told YSM Sports Media. When asked what people could expect from him in a fight, he replied, “Just for me to put on a good show and for me to enjoy boxing again.”
Peterson was one of the most popular fighters of his generation among fans, as well as among his fellow fighters, as his relationships with Davis, Broner and others demonstrate. Helping teach fighters about nutrition and discipline, Peterson was always happy to reach out to Headbangers at his boxing gym when it came to getting in the ring and teaching. His knockout loss to Lipinet was met with grief in his boxing community. One of his end-of-career fans was terrified to watch, especially for one of his good guys.
The 40-year-old, 16-16 Traveling opponent, Ogundo, was the only win since 2017 to beat 0-18 Paolo D’Souza, and an easy enough way to erase those memories. It must have seemed like His win at home at the show made headlines for the man who handed the torch in his area where he helped leaders before concentrating on running the 13.1 miles.
Unfortunately, Peterson suffered the fate that former champions sometimes do when they make a comeback years later – almost four years in his case. Things leveled off as the majority of the 19,731 people who fill the Capital One Arena are still not there. Ogundo hit Peterson with a flash, chopping off his right hand and dropping the former champion hard. Peterson got to his feet, but was mostly trying to stay upright as Ogundo punched him around the ring in the fourth round.
The fight ended there with so much upset that not even the odds for the fight were offered.
Peterson isn’t the first star to come back and find disaster, nor will it be the last. Stopped in a fight that took place in obscurity. The silver lining is that the fight took place outside of the mainstream gaze. The fight was under-hyped, neither by the organizers of the event nor, frankly, by Peterson himself, who never posted about the fight on his Instagram feed. was not directly.
Perhaps Peterson knew what he had done and what he hadn’t left in the tank, but his opponent was unhappy enough and his world-class talent from last year was enough to get him through. Maybe he had some fears and wanted to keep things quiet. Maybe he doesn’t want to deprive the successor he’s helped over the years of the spotlight.
It wasn’t the ending Peterson wanted, and certainly not the ending he deserved. I’ve been thinking clearly about what’s best. A few hours later, Davis stopped Garcia in the 8th round. This is as much part of Peterson’s legacy as what he himself has accomplished in the ring, and the success of what he paved the way for.
Peterson knows that in his new life as a runner, sometimes his job is to be a pacemaker, and at some point he has to get off the track and let other runners go.
Corey Erdman is a boxing writer and commentator based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Follow him on Twitter @corey_erdman.
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