Mauricio Herrera: I’m still not over my loss to Danny Garcia

By Boxing News - 07/01/2014 - Comments

herrera667By Dan Ambrose: #5 WBA, #7 WBC, #7 WBO Mauricio Herrera (20-4, 7 KO’s) is still bothered by his controversial 12 round majority decision loss to WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia from last March in Puerto Rico.

Herrera feels that he should have easily won that fight to capture Garcia’s two world titles, but instead he found himself on the losing end with what many boxing fans feel was a hometown decision.

Garcia has shown zero interest in getting back in the ring with Herrera again. Instead of fighting Herrera and risking a loss, Garcia will be fighting a little known lightweight named Rod Salka in his next fight on August 9th unless the fails to be approved by the WBA or WBC. As for Herrera, he’ll be fighting #1 WBA Johan Perez (19-1-1, 13 KO’s) this month on July 12th for the interim WBA World light welterweight title on the undercard of the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Erislandy Lara fight on Showtime pay-per-view at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“I’m not totally over it, with Danny Garcia. It was frustrating for a while. But I still think about that fight,” Herrera said told Dan Rafael of ESPN. “It is still frustrating in my head. But I wasn’t surprised at the decision either. Nobody ever expected me to do that well, so I have the mentality that I just have to keep going, keep going forward and keep proving myself.”

What’s particularly sad about the Herrera robbery is that at 34, Herrera likely won’t be around too much longer, and this would have been the perfect time for him to win the titles. But instead of having two titles in his possession and getting a nice payday, Herrera will be fighting the tough Johan Perez on July 12th in a fight that could prove difficult for Herrera unless he can raise his game to the same level where he was in performance against Danny.

“As you see in my fights, I can take a good punch. I hold all that in, and I think with Johan Perez I think I might just, who knows, let it all out in that fight,” Herrera said.

Perez isn’t a huge puncher, and not as powerful as Garcia. But he has won his last four fights since suffering a Pablo Cesar Cano in 2012. Perez had a big win over Yoshiro Kamegai in June of last year in beating him by a lopsided 10 round unanimous decision. Perez did a better job against Kamegai than Robert Guerrero did, although he did take a lot of hard head shots in the fight. Perez also has wins over Fernando Monte de Oca, Paul Spadafora and Steve Forbes recently.



Comments are closed.