By Ryan Burton
On April 26th, John Molina will move up to the junior welterweight division and face Lucas Matthysse in Carson, Calif. in a fight televised by Showtime. The fight will serve as the co-feature to Keith Thurman's interim WBA welterweight title defense against Julio Diaz.
Matthysse had a lot of momentum on his side when he entered the ring last September against Danny Garcia. Matthysse ultimately lost a unanimous decision and Molina said that he believes that loss will only serve as more motivation for the Argentine.
"He is coming off of a loss and is going to be even more hungry. He is going to go in there and try to make a statement and say that this is still his division but my job is to not let that happen. My job is to let everyone know that I am new to the division and I am ready to stake my claim that I belong here at 140. With all due respect to the other guys, I believe I have more firepower than the other guys (he fought) and I believe I have the firepower to make him respect me," Molina confidently stated.
I asked Molina what he thought a win over the hard hitting Matthysse would do for his career but he refused to look past Matthysse. Molina ended 2013 with two stoppage wins, including a come from behind knockout of Mickey Bey, and said that he plans on continuing his streak on April 26th.
"I am very excited for the fight. We are training very hard on the fight and 100% of my focus is on Matthysse. I like the momentum that I bring in to the fight plus he is coming off of the longest layoff of his career and he is a good boxer but he won't be hard to find," Molina told BoxingScene.com while also stating his case that his fight should have been the main event. "I think we could have been the main event and should have been the main event. I think our fight will have more action than the rest of the card."
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