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By: Hans Themistode
Danny Garcia sat back in the crowd on September 28th, 2019 at Staples Center in Los Angeles California. But as the rest of the fans in the arena watched Errol Spence Jr and Shawn Porter slug it out for the chance to walk away with two titles, Garcia was thinking of a game plan.
It wasn’t the first time that Garcia sat in his chair and watched Spence from a far. But on each occasion, the unified Welterweight champ left the ring with the win.
Spence may have gotten the victory, but Garcia placed a check mark next to his name. Mission accomplished.
With all of the information that Garcia has on his likely next opponent, it has him believing that his chances against him are high.
“You know, I feel like that’s a great style for me. Porter was hitting him a lot,” said Garcia on the PBC podcast. “And I seen things in the Mikey Garcia fight that I can definitely take advantage of and defeat him.”
Finding anything in the Mikey Garcia fight is unlikely. Spence won every single round on the scorecards of all three judges, and did whatever he wanted in there. The Porter fight though, saw Spence in the fight of his life.
“I thought it was a good fight,” Danny Garcia said. “I had Porter ahead before the knockdown. And then, when Spence scored the knockdown, [and] Spence won the 12th round, then I had him winning by like a point.”
Garcia lost his own fight against Porter in 2018, but styles make fights. And there is no reason to believe that Garcia couldn’t give Spence one of his tougher one’s. With that being said, giving someone a tough fight and outright winning is two different things. And at 32 years of age, coupled with two losses in his last five fights, Garcia has no other choice but to win. Especially when his window at 147 is closing fast.
It’s no secret that Garcia is a big man. When he isn’t slimming down and getting himself ready for a fight, he’s larger than your average Joe. Figuring out how he shrinks down to the 147 pound limit is head scratching, but he won’t be there for long.
“I wanna fight one more at 147 and win a world title,” said Garcia in an interview with FightHype earlier this year. “Then I wanna go up to 154 and start a new journey.”
Winning a world title in three weight classes brings a huge smile to the face of Garcia whenever it’s brought up. But before he can even think about taking on the big boys in the Jr Middleweight division, he’s giving Spence all of his attention.
“I wanna be champion again and he has two belts. This is the opportunity for me to become champion again and win two more belts.”
With wins over Zab Judah, Lamont Peterson, Lucas Matthysse and Amir Khan; Garcia knows a thing or two about winning the big one. But fighting Spence is something else entirely.
Two titles to go along with an undefeated record and a mention on every credible pound for pound list screams that Spence is no ordinary fighter. But while most in the division would view a fight against him as an unlikely win, Garcia looks at it as a chance to prove those who tabbed him as the underdog in most of his big fights, wrong one more time.
“You know, I have some big wins in my career,” Garcia said. “I’ve fought some pretty high-level fights. But it’ll rank among those, you know, big wins. And it depends how I beat him. So, you know, that plays a factor, too.”
