By Dan Ambrose: After spending his last two fights getting his toes went fighting in catch-weights in the welterweight division, Danny Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs) will be fighting at the full weight of 147lbs for the division this Saturday against an aging past his best 34-year-old former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KOs) on Premier Boxing Champions on ESPN from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Garcia sees the fight against Malignaggi as the beginning of bigger things for him in the welterweight division. Garcia will likely continue to be brought along slowly for another year or so before his adviser Al Haymon will have to take the training wheels off and throw Garcia in with someone that is actually in their prime who can punch in the 147lb division.
Garcia almost lost his last fight against Lamont Peterson last April in a catch-weight fight at 143. That obviously wasn’t supposed to happen, as Garcia was the A-side in that fight and was supposed win like Lucas Matthysse had won against Peterson. But it turned out to be a nightmare for Garcia with him wearing down and getting pummeled by the bigger, stronger and better conditioned Peterson.
If that fight was any indication of how Garcia will be doing in the welterweight division, then he might want to think about moving back down to 140 to try and stay afloat as long as he can, because he does not look like he can hang with the top guys at 147 like Shawn Porter, Errol Spence Jr., Amir Khan, Kell Brook and Keith Thurman.
“I’m not really worried about him (Malignaggi). I have trained hard and I’m 110 percent focused,” Garcia said via Fighthub.com. “Whatever he brings to the table — no matter what age he is — I will come out victorious. I’m going to go in there and people are going to see a much sharper Danny Garcia.”
Garcia thinks he’s going to be better because he’s a little bit bigger. I’m not sure that it going to work that way. Adding four pounds of weight from what Garcia weighed in for his last fight against Peterson isn’t going to really do much in terms of Garcia’s power. When it’s only 4 pounds of weight, you’re not going to get dramatic results from that. It takes a lot more weight than that for a fighter to get anything a boost in power and in a lot of cases, a fighter doesn’t gain punching power in moving up in weight. Power is something that is either there or not there. You can pack on weight without getting any stronger
“I laugh at it (criticism) all of the time. I laugh at it all the time because at the end of the day, eight of my last 10 opponents are current or former world champions,” Garcia said.
Yes, Garcia has beaten a lot of champions and former champions like Zab Judah, Erik Morales, Kendall Holt, Nate Campbell, and Amir Khan. What Garcia doesn’t say is that most of those fighters weren’t in their prime when he fought them. Judah, Morales, Campbell and Holt were way past their primes when Garcia fought them. You can’t say that Gacia would have beaten a prime Morales, Campbell, Holt or Judah. Even with Garcia’s weight advantage over them, I think they would have all beaten him.
“Name a young fighter in the game who has fought eight of their last 10 fights against former or current world champions and won? I can’t name one. Or one who is 27 years old like me?” Garcia said.
A lot of boxing fans think Garcia lost to Mauricio Herrera and Peterson. He thinks he beat those fighters 8 rounds to 4, but a lot of fans think Garcia didn’t do enough to deserve the decisions against them. Garcia’s not really in the position to brag right now because of the controversy surrounding those fights.
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