By Dan Ambrose: After sitting out of the ring for an entire year, former two division world champion Mikey Garcia (34-0, 28 KOs) says he plans on moving up two divisions to campaign as a light welterweight at 140 pounds.
Garcia, 27, wants to take a catch-weight fight under the full 140 pound limit for his first fight back, and then after that fight for a world title against one of the light welterweight champions.
Garcia hasn’t fought since beating Juan Carlos Burgos by a 12 round unanimous decision last year in January when he defended his WBO super featherweight title for the last time.
Since that fight, Garcia has been sitting out of action with promotional issues with Top Rank. He’s lost a year of his career by sitting out of the ring without defending his title or moving on in another direction. It’s a pity that Garcia let that time go by, because he’s not likely to have improved with the time out of the ring.
“I really hope and look forward to maybe coming back early in the first quarter of this year,” Garcia said via Fighthype. “I want to come back strong and make 2015 a very, very good for year for me. I need to get back. I want to resume my career. I think 140 is where I want to be. We may take a fight at a catch-weight and then fight for a world title.”
It’s pretty obvious where Top Rank will be directing Mikey if he moves up to 140. He’ll either face WBA light welterweight champion Jessie Vargas or fight for the WBO 140 pound title, likely against Terence Crawford.
Both Crawford and Vargas are Top Rank promoted fighters, so it’s a no-brainer that Mikey will be fighting one of them. My guess is he’ll fight Vargas, because Crawford’s counter punching style of fighting is all wrong for Mikey, and I can’t see Arum wanting to make that fight. Mikey would have too much to lose in facing Crawford.
It’s a risky gamble for Mikey to move up in weight to 140, because he’s still rail thin and he doesn’t seem to take punishment too well. When the going got tough for Mikey in his fight against Orlando Salido, Mikey was quick to bow out of the fight in the 8th with a broken nose rather than sticking it out like Salido, who complained of having broken nose as well. Mikey did alright in the early rounds of the fight, but when Salido started to punish him with shots, Mikey didn’t look so hot.
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