Mikey Garcia ready to take a big step in boxing

By matthias - 01/28/2017 - Comments

Image: Mikey Garcia ready to take a big step in boxing

By Matthias Predonzan:  Just a few hours from the fight against WBC Lightweight World Champion, Dejan Zlaticanin, Miguel Angel “Mikey” Garcia is on the verge to regain his spot in the elite level of professional boxing at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

His past promotional issues that kept him away from fighting for more than two years were, similarly to Andre Ward, risking compromising the fighter career and equally important, risking to deprive the sport of boxing of one of his best assets.

(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime)

Being Mikey Garcia younger than Ward, I see him to have maintained, better than the light heavyweight fighter, his chances to complete his career, achieving one of the top spot in the pound 4 pound and pay-per-view lists.

Maybe even more important, Mickey has the potential to fill up, at least in part, the void that the departure from activity of Floyd Mayweather jr and the ending of Manny Pacquiao career, are leaving in the sport.

The reason why I say that, is not because there are not talented young and affirmed boxers out there. There are, quite a lot but to get in the spotlight are required some ingredients that are different from talent alone.

We can see that “GGG” Gennady Golovkin, for example, is a very spectacular and solid fighter but still, not able to get good results in  pay-per-view terms. He is not Mexican, nor American.

Mickey is Mexican American, very good boxer, with a spectacular style, articulated and good promoter of himself: nothing is missing with Mickey, especially an endless list of potential great fights ahead. Against Lomachenko or Crawford, to mention two, promoter permitting.

His choice to challenge a dangerous fighter in Dejan Zlaticanin, only in his second fight, after a long stay out period, could look risky.

I think it is a perfect choice.

The risk is in every fight and technically, in my opinion, Mickey will not have too many problems taking care of the hard hitting but technically limited fighter from Montenegro.

Some websites, like BoxRec, are putting the challenger as underdog in this fight.

I do not see why, looking at the resume of the two fighters.

Honestly I’m often struggling to understand the complicate logic behind BoxRec ranking and preferences.
Danny Garcia, for example, is seen, in the website, as a favorite in his coming fight against Keith Thurman. I can imagine because his record is statistically better that Thurman’s. But I get lost then, when I find Thurman ahead of Garcia – in the same website – lb for lb list.