Lucas Matthysse has called it a career after 15 years of pro competition.
The former WBA ?regular? welterweight champion announced on Instagram late on August 1 that he is retiring from the sport, weeks after losing his WBA title to Manny Pacquiao in Malaysia on an event streamed in the United States on ESPN+. Below is the Instagram post in Spanish.
Matthysse started his career in 2004 in Argentina where he would go undefeated in six years, knocking out almost every fighter put in front of him. He got his first big break as a boxer in 2010 when he fought multiple-time world champion Zab Judah in a 140-pound title eliminator. Matthysse showed he belonged in the upper echelon of fighters of the sport but ultimately lost a split decision to Judah.
The 35-year-old Matthysse then rebounded with a win over DeMarcus Corley and followed it up with a fight against former welterweight champion Devon Alexander, losing that fight as well by split decision. In 2012, Matthysse won the interim WBC junior welterweight title and made two successful defenses of the belt, including a third-round TKO win over Lamont Peterson.
In the following years, Matthysse would remain in the title picture, facing some of the best boxers at 140 pounds at the time. Some of those fights include former champions Danny Garcia, Viktor Postol and Ruslan Provodnikov.
In 2017, Matthysse made the jump to welterweight, where he won the vacant WBA ?regular? welterweight title this past January with a knockout win over previously undefeated boxer Tewa Kiram. Matthysse?s lone welterweight title defense took him to Malaysia where he would get knocked out by Pacquiao in the seventh-round of their fight on July 15.
Matthysse, a former Argentine amateur national champion, retires with a 39-5 record as a pro, winning 36 of those fights by knockout.