Former middleweight champion Peter Quilin will return to the ring on September 8th after a 21 month layoff, according to Dan Rafael of espn.com.
“People think I’m retired,” Quillin told ESPN on Wednesday night. “I would have announced if I was retired. But I’ve gone through a lot. I changed my team. I have some new people in my circle. I needed to make sure I had the time I needed with them. But now I am ready to go and ready to start the second leg of my career.”
“I’ve put it behind me,” Quillin said. “We can always pick and choose what we did wrong, but what happened happened. If in the future me and Danny can do a rematch so be it, but that story is the way God intended for me to learn.”
“I don’t want to be disrespectful to anyone I’ve worked with before, but being with Virgil, I find he explains things a lot more than I ever had. He’s psychologically preparing me. I got a little too comfortable in training. Now I understand it’s my job and my lifestyle.”
“I want to move back into the world title line,” Quillin said. “So Benavidez is the main event. I’ve watched him come a long way. He was my sparring partner for a few of my camps. Now I’m on his undercard. I appreciate the journey and what I’ve learned from the sport. You got to appreciate and understand the journey, but this part is humbling.”
“I’ve been middleweight since I was 18 years old, and making 160 was becoming a problem,” he said. “Behind the scenes I was suffering a lot in my body trying to make the weight. But now I am good in terms of my weight.”
“It’s hard living here [in the Bay Area] most of the time and trying to balance a family, but we do a lot of FaceTime,” he said. “But I feel I am back on track and looking forward to fighting again and continuing my journey.”
