By Victor Salazar
New York, NY- Danny Jacobs (30-1, 27 KO’s) will make his third defense of his WBA "regular" middleweight title in the battle of Brooklyn when he takes on Peter Quillin (32-0-1, 23 KO’s) on Saturday at the Barclays Center.
But what many may not know is that Jacobs potentially could have withdrawn from the fight had there not been an USADA drug testing protocol. It was something he requested and something he had to go out of his way to implement.
“Every world championship fight, USADA plays a part,” Jacobs told BoxingScene.com. “The fact that this wasn’t brought to my attention early on kind of made me a little suspicious. But we urged that USADA be implemented and that we be randomly tested just to be on an even playing field.”
So when he inquired as to why there was a delay, Jacobs says that the commission of New York played a role in the delay.
“It was weird, normally USADA comes six or seven weeks before the matchup,” explained Jacobs. “Four week in camp I asked what was going on where is USADA. When I inquired about it I found out that the New York Commission or whoever was involved did not want USADA involved. I said I wouldn’t fight unless USADA was involved."
"I don’t put judgement on anybody but I feel this a sport where guys can take shortcuts and not even to enhance their performance but to lose weight and that to me is not fair. I wanted to make sure we want to go through the same thing to make weight and an intense training camp.”
Even though Quillin has had issues in the past with the 160 middleweight limit, he expects the best Peter Quillin.
“I’m not expecting a weak dried out Peter Quillin. I’m expecting the best Peter Quillin. When you expect the best, you train for the best and if he’s not the best, at least I’m prepared.”
