Mikey Garcia vs. Juan Carlos Burgos next Saturday

By Boxing News - 01/18/2014 - Comments

garcia55By Dan Ambrose: Next Saturday night WBO super featherweight champion Mikey Garcia (33-0, 28 KO’s) will be making his first and likely his last title defense against Juan Carlos Burgos (30-1-2, 20 KO’s) at Madison Square Garden in New York. The idea here is for Mikey to move up to lightweight and get in a fight or two and then move to light welterweight in September to possibly get a fight with Manny Pacquiao if it looks like he’ll be leaving Top Rank’s stable at the end of the year.

Mikey’s has said he’d like to unify titles at super featherweight and lightweight, but clearly if he bothers to do this then he could be closing the door on him getting a shot against Pacquiao if he chooses to leave Top Rank. Mikey has to move quickly to move up to 140 just in case Pacquiao decides he won’t re-sign with Top Rank.

As far as the Garcia-Burgos fight goes, it’s an identical fight as Mikey’s last mismatch against Roman Martinez from last November. Burgos and Martinez are about the same in the talent department. In fact, they fought to a 12 round draw last year in January. Burgos then fought to another 12 round draw, this time against Yakubu Amidu last July. Burgos is a good fighter, but no better than Amidu and Martinez.

It’s just surprising that HBO said yes to this fight, because they’re usually particular about the fights they show on their network. If they know a fight is going to be a mismatch like the Garcia-Burgos fight, they normally would refuse to bless the fight. But they’ve said yes to this fight, and it’s not going to be competitive.

They might as well have pulled Orlando Salido back and had him face Mikey in a rematch because that would be a much better fight than having Burgos lose to him. They would just need a referee that can control Mikey from pulling down on Salido’s head so often like he did in their fight last year in January. Mikey got away with that move all fight long.

When Mikey moves up to the lightweight division, it’ll be interesting to see if his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank matches him against Yuriorkis Gamboa. I can’t see Arum doing this because Gamboa could spoil the broth by beating Mikey before Arum can turn him into an attraction. Arum wants to make Mikey a big star, but Gamboa is too dangerous for him and Arum likely won’t let him get that fight.

Other fights on the card as follows:

Sean Monaghan vs. Matt Vanda
Bryant Jennings vs. Artur Szpilka
Felix Verdejo vs. Lauro Alcantar
Jesse Hart vs. Derrick Findley



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