Mikey Garcia willing to negotiate fight with Yuriorkis Gamboa

By Boxing News - 01/26/2014 - Comments

mikey55By Chris Williams: Getting booed from start to finish, WBO super featherweight champion Mikey Garcia (34-0, 28 KO’s) did what he had to do for him to beat Juan Carlos Burgos (30-2-2, 20 KO’s) tonight by a 12 round unanimous decision at the Madison Square Garden Theater, in New York, New York, USA. There weren’t any knockdowns in the fight, but Mikey almost went down in the 2nd round when he was hit by a left hook that he never saw coming from Burgos.

Like always, Mikey showed good power with both hands, and he probably would have scored a stoppage if he had pushed hard for it in the 2nd half of the fight. But Mikey looked like he didn’t want to take any chances of getting caught with something while going for the knockout.

Burgos may have put the fear in him after hitting him with the left hook to the jaw in the 2nd round that sent Mikey flying across the ring and hitting the ropes. The referee kind of blew it by not calling it a knockout because the ropes clearly prevented Mikey from falling down on the canvas, and that’s technically supposed to be a knockdown.

As for the booing from the crowd, it was caused by Mikey and Burgos both fighting in a less than aggressive manner. You can’t blame Mikey for not being exciting because he’s a counter puncher, and he doesn’t really have the skills to come forward and initiate stuff on his own. He’s strictly the type of fighter that has to wait for his opportunities to come to him. When his opponents fail to fight aggressively, as was the case tonight, Mikey looks very limited and is kind of boring to watch. Floyd Mayweather Jr., he is not. He’s just a fighter that has a lot of power for the super featherweight division, but who doesn’t do a lot of things well like other fighters when it comes to offensive skills.

WBA interim lightweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa (23-0, 16 KO’s) was in attendance tonight. When HBO mentioned Gamboa, Mikey sounded a little defensive in saying “Gamboa knows what to do. Sit down at the table ad negotiate and if all parties can come to an agreement, then good.”

Mikey better think long and hard before he accepts a fight against Gamboa, because the Cuban fighter could spoil his dream fight against Manny Pacquiao. Mikey already didn’t look good tonight against an average fighter in Burgos. If Mikey couldn’t impress against Burgos, then it’s quite possible that Gamboa would beat him. Mikey can always use the excuse that his brother Robert Garcia has for him not to fight Gamboa due to him dropping out of a fight against Brandon Rios in the past. Mikey could always use that same excuse and it would go over well with sympathetic fans, who weren’t happy to see Gamboa choose not to fight Rios when the two were supposed to face each other two years ago.

Arum is giving Mikey a golden ticket to the Pacquiao fight in either September or early next year. All Mikey has to do is beat a token lightweight in his next fight, and Arum will likely give him the Pacquiao fight, if only because he’s got no one else to put in with Pacquiao for September other than Tim Bradley for a third fight. I’m sure Arum would rather put off the third fight between Pacquiao until 2015, since he’d probably like to space out the fights in order not to sicken fans in seeing the same fighter over and over. Mikey doesn’t have to fight anyone good like Gamboa for Arum to give him the fight with Pacquiao. Arum didn’t match Mikey up with Guillermo Rigondeaux when he was at featherweight, so why would he put Mikey in with a good lightweight like Gamboa or Terence Crawford? There’s too much of a chance that Mikey loses to both of those guys.



Comments are closed.