Danny Garcia says he feels stronger at 147

By Boxing News - 07/01/2015 - Comments

garcia2By Dan Ambrose: After years of cutting weight to get down to 140lbs for his fights at light welterweight, unbeaten Danny Garica (30-0, 17 KOs) will be fighting for the first time at the full 147 pound weight limit for his August 1st fight against former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KOs) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Garcia believes that the added strength that he’ll have at welterweight will help him succeed in this weight class. He’s always been big for the light welterweight division, and it’s surprising that he stuck it out in that weight class all this time. But in moving up in weight, Garcia might not be able to dominate like he did at 140, because the guys he’ll be facing will be just as big as him now, if not better.

Garcia’s biggest advantage at light welterweight was being bigger than his opponents in terms of weight, but that’s not going to be there for him now that he’s moving up to the full weight for the welterweight division. Without the extra weight, Garcia might just be an average fighter living off of yesterday’s accomplishments.

“For the first time in a long time, I could worry about training to get better and not training to lose weight,” Garcia said to Fighthype.com. “I’ve been fighting at 140 my whole career. I just felt like losing the weight was affecting my performances, mostly in the later rounds of big fights because I will use a lot of my energy losing weight.”

What’s troubling is that Garcia is facing a former light welterweight in Malignaggi for this fight rather than a true welterweight. This is the third straight fight at welterweight for Garcia where he’s fighting a non-welterweight.

If he’s going to be fighting at 147, then why is he still fighting light welterweights? Garcia needs to get it over with already he’s spent a year of his career fighting at catch-weights to get used to the division, but he’s faced guys that weren’t welterweights.

Garcia should have no problems beating Malignaggi because he’s not a puncher, and besides that he’s up there in age at 34 and hasn’t fought in over a year since being stopped in the 4th round by Shawn Porter in April of 2014. Garcia’s youth and power advantage over Malignaggi should be enough for him to get a fairly easy victory.

I doubt that Garcia will be much stronger at 147 than he was at 140. He might be a little stronger, but we’re only talking about seven pounds of weight, so it’s not as if he’s going to start punching like Gennady Golovkin.

Garcia looked terrible in his last fight against Lamont Peterson in April of this year. Garcia dominated the early rounds due to Peterson being too respectful of his power, but once Peterson started taking the fight to Garcia, it was pretty one-sided in the second half of the fight with Peterson dominating the action. The fight was close enough to warrant a rematch, but Garcia refused, feeling that he easily won the fight by an 8 rounds to 4 score.



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