Danny Garcia: I’ll beat Floyd Mayweather Jr

By Boxing News - 05/13/2016 - Comments

garcia#11By Allan Fox: WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia (32-0, 18 KOs) is eager to see if Floyd Mayweather Jr. will be coming out of retirement to fight him next. If Mayweather does return to the ring, he’ll be doing it at any time because he’ll likely want to take the September date from WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on the Mexican Independence Day holiday on September 17.

The only way Mayweather and Garcia and kick Canelo off this day is if they announce their fight as soon as possible. Garcia, 28, believes that he’s got the talent to give Mayweather the first loss of his career.

Garcia will need to fight a lot better than he showed in his recent fights against Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero, Lamont Peterson and Mauricio Herrera. All three of those fights were very close, and you can argue that Garcia deserved to lose all three of them.

He’s somehow getting wins in very close fights, but he won’t have luck forever. Garcia isn’t fighting at a high enough level to conclusively beat the better fighters.

“I haven’t heard anything yet,” Garcia said to skysports.com about a fight against Mayweather. “I’ve seen it in social media, but as far as me talking to anyone about fighting Floyd Mayweather? I didn’t hear about it yet – or it hasn’t reached me yet. I have been following him through my career and I feel I have the tools to go out there and dethrone him,” said Garcia.

If Mayweather does decide to come back to the sport, he will take a lot of criticism if he chooses to fight Garcia. There are better fighters out there for Mayweather to fight than Garcia. Much better. A fight against Garcia would have made sense three years for Mayweather, but he’s waited too long to take the fight. Garcia’s stock has dropped like a rock from his controversial fights against Maurcicio Herrera, Lamont Peterson and Robert Guerrero.

The only selling point for a Mayweather vs. Garcia fight is Garcia’s undefeated record. Garcia doesn’t have a huge fan base with the casual boxing fans. He’s only known by hardcore boxing fans, and his rep is a mix bag with them. The only way to see Mayweather-Garcia to the boxing public that doesn’t know him is to constantly mention Garcia’s unbeaten record and show a lot of clips of him being overmatched smaller/weaker opposition like lightweight Rod Salka and the light hitting Paulie Malignaggi.

If Mayweather wants to impress fans, he needs to take a real risk in his comeback by taking on the likes of Errol Spence, Gennady Golovkin or the winner of the Keith Thurman vs. Shawn Porter fight. Those are the only guys that will attract interest. Mayweather can’t fight Amir Khan because he was just beaten by Canelo. A fight against Canelo won’t work because fans still remember how one-sided the Mayweather-Canelo fight in 2013 was. Mayweather can’t fight Manny Pacquiao because he’s being elected into the senate in the Philippines and is finished as a fighter.

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“But I want it [a fight against Mayweather]. I am a great fighter, I believe in myself physically and mentally and I think I will beat anyone who steps in the ring with me,” said Garcia.

Garcia should start fighting good fighters because it’s been three years since he last fought someone in an even fight in his low blow-filled win over Lucas Matthysse in 2013. Garcia was given the WBC welterweight title on a platter when the World Boxing Council allowed him to fight Robert Guerrero for the vacant belt last January. Instead of the WBC insisting on Garcia fighting someone really good like Spence, they let him fight Guerrero, who fought well enough to deserve a draw in the fight.

Guerrero came into the Garcia fight having lost two out of his last four fights. It was troubling that the WBC let Garcia fight Guerrero rather than someone better. If you were to look at this in football terms, the WBC let a fighter get to the Super Bowl with an 8-8 record. Guerrero came into the Garcia fight with a 2-2 record in his last four fights and was fighting for the vacant WBC 147lb title. That just seemed very out of place and it cheapened the WBC belt in my view because they should have had better fighters fighting for it.

“It would be a dream come true and a fight I would love to see happen. That’s what we want to do. There will be a new king in there and I am looking forward to getting in there and getting the job done,” Garcia said.

A fight between Mayweather and Garcia would be predictable for Mayweather. I think it would make him look bad though because it would look like a cherry picking move on Mayweather’s part rather than one where he takes a risk by fighting someone that could actually beat him like the winner of the Thurman-Porter fight, Kell Brook, Errol Spence or Golovkin.