Danny Garcia isn’t a competitive fight for Pacquiao, says Arum

By Boxing News - 10/01/2015 - Comments

1-Garcia_Cunningham_7-22-15_18518By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny “Swift” Garcia (31-0, 18 KOs) isn’t in the plans for a fuure fight against Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs), according to Top Rank promoter Bob Arum. He doesn’t think it’s a good fight for Pacquiao because the 27-year-old Garcia was given recent controversial decision wins over Lamont Peterson and Mauricio Herrera.

Arum feels that Garcia should have lost those fights, and he doesn’t think that he would be competitive at all with the likes of Pacquiao if he were to make those matches happen.

“I don’t think Danny Garcia is a competitive fight for Manny,” said Arum to Fighthub. “Garcia got a couple of gift decisions [against Mauricio Herrera and Lamont Peterson] that he didn’t deserve against Herrera and the other fighter [Peterson]. I’m not really interested in Garcia,” Arum said.

It would prove to be nearly impossible to match Pacquiao against Garcia anyway due to Garcia’s adviser being Al Haymon, a person that Arum’s Top Rank company has a lawsuit pending. For a Garcia vs. Pacquiao fight to take place, it would require that Arum and Haymon to have to work together to make the fight happen.

Even Garcia doesn’t see it as possible due to the litigation. The reason there’s been interest in the Pacquiao-Garcia fight is because Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach has repeatedly said to the media that he’d like to see Pacquiao fight Garcia because he thinks that his fighting style would be perfect for Pacquiao.

Garcia likes to come forward and throw a lot of left hooks. Roach feels that this predictable fighting style would be easy for Pacquiao to take advantage of. For Garcia to beat a guy like Pacquiao, he would need to change his fighting style so that he could show some new wrinkles to his game that Pacquiao hasn’t seen before.

I don’t think that would be possible with Garcia unless he got a new trainer to replace his father Angel Garcia. I think it would be impossible for Garcia to be anything other than the fighter he’s been in the past as long as Angel is the one that is steering his career and showing him how to fight.

Garcia recently moved up to the welterweight division officially with his first fight at the full weight of 147lbs against the light hitting Paulie Malignaggi last August. Garcia won the fight by a 9th round stoppage victory, but the fight proved nothing because Malignaggi isn’t relevant in the welterweight division any longer.

For Garcia to really accomplish something at 147, he’s going to need to prove that he can beat the likes of Shawn Porter, Brandon Rios, Tim Bradley, Marcos Maidana, Keith Thurman, Errol Spence and Diego Chaves.

You can add Amir Khan’s name to that list as well, even though Garcia previously defeated him three years ago. Garcia will likely need to prove that he can beat Khan a second time once Floyd Mayweather Jr. gives up his WBC welterweight title. Khan is ranked No.1 by the WBC and Garcia No.2. Unless Khan or Garcia aren’t interested in going after the WBC title, they’re going to need to fight each other for that belt.



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