By Keith Idec

Peter Quillin understands why boxing fans and media prefer talking about his much-discussed showdown with Daniel Jacobs later this year.

He just doesn’t like it.

The former WBO middleweight champion understands that unless he defeats Australian underdog Michael Zerafa on Sept. 12 in Mashantucket, Conn., his fight against Jacobs (30-1, 27 KOs) won’t happen Dec. 5 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Several Internet sports books have installed Quillin, 32, as a 100-1 favorite over the 23-year-old Zerafa (17-1, 9 KOs), who lost his only fight outside of Australia and hasn’t fought anyone as good as Quillin (31-0-1, 22 KOs), a Grand Rapids, Michigan native.

“I don’t like that it’s that way, that [fans] look forward or past [Zerafa],” Quillin said on a conference call Thursday. “I feel like, in my mind, that you’ve always got to give a person a shot and give him the decency to let him know that he’s able to do something. I’m trying to keep my mind focused just on Michael because I know everybody’s looking to shock, to make a name for theyself, including him.

“If he was to come in with a proper game plan and he comes in there and beats me, it would probably be one of the biggest upsets in boxing thus far. But my job is to take everybody serious – where it’s Michael, whether it’s Danny Jacobs, whether it’s Gennady Golovkin, whether it’s any other name out there. It’s just staying focused on the guy that’s in front of you and Michael is that guy in front of me. And my job is to try to win one round at a time.”

The Quillin-Zerafa fight will be the main event of a “PBC On NBC” doubleheader televised from Foxwoods Resort Casino (4 p.m. ET; 1 p.m. PT). The telecast is scheduled to start with a 12-round bout between Detroit’s Cornelius Bundrage (34-5, 19 KOs, 1 NC) and Houston’s Jermall Charlo (21-0, 16 KOs) for Bundrage’s IBF junior middleweight title.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.