By Dan Ambrose: WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (27-0, 16 KO’s) had a big opportunity to position himself for a big money fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. last September in fighting on the undercard of the Mayweather vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight card at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, against Lucas Matthysse. But Garcia blew his chance to shine on the card by choosing to clinch and run all night long in winning a stinker of a fight in the co-feature.
It was a serious buzz kill to have the Garcia-Matthysse fight come on right before the main event between Mayweather and Canelo, because Garcia’s defensive fighting made it really boring to watch. Garcia put on a low blow and clinching clinic in that fight, and the referee only took one point from him.
Garcia’s fans don’t care that his performance against Matthysse was dull to watch and that he was given a bogus knockdown in the 11th after pushing Matthysse through the ropes and nailing him while he was stuck in between the ropes. Many of Garcia’s fans are just happy that he got the victory, and they now want Mayweather to give him a fight. But the problem here is that Mayweather obviously wasn’t impressed with how Garcia fought, because he didn’t look good, the fans didn’t go crazy over the way he fought, and it’s an appealing fight for Mayweather to fight someone with such a negative fighting style. It would be like Mayweather deciding to fight the purely defensive Erislara Landy.
It’s not a fight that fans would be excited , especially if Garcia came out and started running, throwing low blows and clinching 24/7. It would be an ugly fight to where Mayweather would have to try and pry Garcia off of him all night or catch him from his running. And getting hit low over and over again would be tough on Mayweather, because that’s not what he expects from an opponent.
If Danny Garcia wants a fight against Mayweather, then he’s going to need to change his fighting style to become more crowd-friendly. He’ll need to stop throwing low blows, stop clinching all the time, and stop running. He’s going to need to actually fight to make it interesting for Mayweather, because with the way that Garcia performed against Matthysse, he probably put himself to the back of the line for a Mayweather fight.
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