With all of the major world middleweight champions tied-up for the immediate future, America’s No. 1 160-pound boxer Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin (27-0, 20 KOs) must remain patient, active and confident until he gets his impending title fight.
Quillin is coming off of a convincing 10-round unanimous decision win over four-time World Light Middleweight Champion Ronald “Winky” Wright (51-6-1, 25 KOs), whose other five career losses have all been to world champions, live on Showtime.
“I have ‘Winky’ Wright’s name on my record,” Quillin spoke about his most recent fight. “He was a great fighter who took the fight with me hoping to get lucky. I don’t believe in luck. What I learned was I need to keep working hard, stay dedicated to boxing and continue sacrificing, in order to win at this high level. It was a good experience for me.
“My team has had to slow down my horses as far as who I want to fight. I have a great team and trust my promoter (Golden Boy Promotions), managers (John Seip and Jim McDevitt), adviser (Al Haymon) and trainers (Freddie Roach and Eric Brown). All I have to do is train to fight. They’ll tell me who I’m fighting next and I’ll be ready. I’m blessed not to be stressed. I want to stay busy. I never put on too many pounds between fights because my life is boxing. There’s no way around it – I will put on a superstar performance in my next fight, no matter who I’m fighting.”
Quillin has moved up in the ratings, as high as No. 3 in the International Boxing Federation world rankings, in addition to No. 5 by the World Boxing Association and No. 12 by the World Boxing Council. He recently cracked The Ring Magazine’s ratings for the first time at No. 10.
As he waits for the world middleweight championship picture to be settled in the next few months, Team Chocolate hopes to get Quillin right back in the ring against a quality opponent such as former world champion Sebastian Zbik (30-2, 10 KOs) or Mathew “Mack The Knife” Macklin (28-4, 19 KOs), a former European champion and past world title challenger.
“Peter is knocking at the door of something special,” Seip said. “We want Peter to stay active, hopefully, fighting again in August and then in December. We didn’t like the long delay between his fight last November against (Craig) McEwan and earlier this month with ‘Winky.’ We originally turned down the fight with ‘Winky’ because the money wasn’t right and we were in a no-win situation. Then we had a fight fall through and we wasted four weeks thinking we had a fight against (Andy) Lee on March 17.
“We had to get Peter back in the ring, so we agreed to fight ‘Winky’ with an increased purse and the fight landing on Showtime. I think what Peter learned from that fight was mostly mental, learning from all it took to fight a future Hall of Famer on a big stage. We were confident of winning all along. I’m happy with the mental preparation Peter went through and it’s only going to help him in future fights. Circumstances dictated the delay in Peter fighting but now we intend to keep him busy. Peter’s going to stay in shape and take a lateral fight because there are no title-shot opportunities up for grabs right now. All of the world champions are tied-up for the next few months.”
Meanwhile, “Kid Chocolate” took a few days off last weekend to celebrate his 29th birthday (Friday, June 22) in South Beach (Miami) with his brother, hip-hop artist “Sheddy,” whose live music accompanied Quillin into the ring against Wright. Peter has returned home to Manhattan, where he will continue giving boxing lessons at Trinity Street Gym, and working out there until it’s time for him to go back to Los Angeles and open training camp at the Wild Card Gym.
