Garcia defeats Prescott; Truax decisions Ennis

By Boxing News - 07/25/2014 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: In a battle of 2nd tier welterweights, Roberto Garcia (36-3, 23 KOs) survived a 9th round knockdown to defeat Breidis Prescott (27-6, 20 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision on Friday night at the UIC Pavilion, in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

The final judges’ scores were 96-93, 95-94 and 96-92. Prescott dropped Garcia in the 9th round with a left-right combination that put a surprised Garcia on his backside.

Garcia pushed the fight all night long in pressuring the constantly Prescott, and looking to KO him with every punch he threw. Due to the continue movement and the nifty ducking and dodging by Prescott, Garcia missed countless punches. He did not look good at all in doing an imitation of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez with all the wild punches he was throwing.

If Garcia had simply stopped loading up and focused on throwing straight punches, he would have had much better success in connecting with his shots. But he wouldn’t do it. Garcia wanted to land everything with power, and it made it easy for Prescott to elude his shots.

This is the same Garcia that Antonio Margarito easily out-boxed in 2010 in beating him by a lopsided 10 round decision.

That was the last time Garcia fought a good opponent. If you wonder why Garcia isn’t ranked in the top 15, it’s the poor opposition he’s been fighting for the past four years, including his fight against Prescott tonight. Garcia should have stepped it up a long time ago against better opposition.

Prescott, a former lightweight, showed no interest in stopping and exchanging with Garcia for any length of time. It was as if he realized that he didn’t have the chin or the power for him to be trading with Garcia. So instead of fighting him, Prescott focused on making him look bad, and he did a good job of that.

I scored the fight a draw, because Prescott landed the cleaner shots with the better accuracy. Garcia looked too clumsy and uncoordinated for me to give the win.

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In the co-feature, middleweight slugger Caleb Truax (23-1-2, 14 KOs) defeated Dereck Ennis (24-4-1, 13 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision. It was a good fight where both guys landed some nice shots, but Truax showed the better power of the two. The final judges’ scores were 97-93, 97-93 and 99-90. It’s too bad that Truax can’t punch a little harder, because he would be a decent fighter if he had Golovkin like power.

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Light heavyweight Mike Lee (13-0, 7 KOs) stayed unbeaten with a 6 round majority decision win over Paul Gonzalves (7-4, 3 KO’s) in a much harder than expected fight. The judges’ scores were 58-56, 58-56 and 57-57.



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