Ellerbe: Broner will walk Mikey Garcia down

By Boxing News - 07/27/2017 - Comments

Image: Ellerbe: Broner will walk Mikey Garcia down

By Chris Williams: Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe has kept his eye on Mikey Garcia’s career, and he’s not impressed with him like others as he heads into his fight against Adrien “The Problem” Broner on Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Ellerbe says the bigger fighter Broner (33-2, 24 KOs) is going to walk down the smaller guy Garcia and he knows what’s going to happen then. Ellberbe notes that Mike (36-0, 30 KOs) hasn’t been matched tough during his career. Ellberbe says he knows how the business is done when management matches someone weak, and he sees that as the reason why the 29-year-old Mikey Garcia has the record he has. The record that Garcia has put together has come from beating a lot of softer fighters as he’s marched through the lower weight classes.

What a lot of people are saying in the boxing world is the two guys that Broner lost to, Marcos Maidana and Shawn Porter, would beat Mikey Garcia and all the guys he’s ever fought. It’s hard to disagree with that view. Maidana and Porter would be a tactical nightmare for a slender, small-boned fighter like Garcia. He’s skin and bones. Garcia is too bird-like with his bone structure for him to handle a rugged fighter like Broner in my opinion.

Garcia can hit hard but he’s not able to throw with power when he’s pressured and backed up. Look at Garcia’s fight with Orlando Salido. Garcia’s power evaporated by the 7th round due to the pressure that Salido was putting on him. Garcia was forced to back and move so much that he lost all the power on his shots by the midpoint of the fight. Maidana and Porter would put hands on Garcia, and force him to take shots. Garcia is good at throwing punches, but he doesn’t look like the same fighter when he’s getting hit back. He’s very average when getting hit.

Broner has faced the opposition during his career than Garcia. That’s just a fact. Broner lost to Maidana and Porter, but he gave them problems and he fought well for a fighter who didn’t use the right game plan for those fights.

Garcia having a manufactured record of soft jobs probably won’t sit too well for his loyal following of boxing fans, because they feel that he’s a major talent in the sport. Ellberbe, a pretty smart guy, thinks otherwise about Garcia. Ellberbe sees Garcia as a good fighter, but not as good as boxing fans think he is.

“No, absolutely not,” said Ellerbe to Fighthub in response to a question of whether Mikey has been matched against tougher opposition during his 9 year career.”I’m fully, fully aware of who built his career. I know the mindset, I know how they build fighters, and they have more confidence in some fighters, and some fighters ask to be put in tough. That’s how Floyd always was, he didn’t want nothing easy. He wanted those tests early on so you know where you at, said Ellerbe.

Tell it like it is, Leonard. Ellberbe is giving the boxing fans the straight scoop. What can you say? This is the man’s opinion, and he does seem to know a lot about match-making and how it’s done in the sport. Moreover, Ellberbe seems to have studied Mikey’s career and he doesn’t see anything special about how he’s been matched. In other words, “there is no there there,” as Gertrude Stein once said.
Garcia has built up a reputation for being a tremendous puncher, but he’s not knocked out anyone of note. Garcia never came close to knocking out Orlando Salido in their fight in the past. Salido is the biggest name on Garcia’s resume by far. At the end of that fight, Salido was coming on and he looked like he had mean intentions.

“If you hadn’t been down there and you hadn’t been through any tough test in your boxing career, you know, what’s going to happen when you’re in a dogfight — when you’re in a dogfight?” said Ellerbe about Garcia. ”When he hits Adrien Broner, Adrien ain’t going to go nowhere. They making a big deal about [Garcia’s] power, he’s a good puncher — smaller weights, different types of fighters that he’s been fighting, [but] Adrien’s done been in there.”

I agree with Mr. Ellerbe. What’s going to happen when Garcia hits Broner and he doesn’t go anywhere? What does Garcia do then? Does he try and flee the battle field, hold and stall out the fight to keep Broner from throwing anything back? When the going gets tough will Garcia stand his ground and go out on his shield or will he bow out? Coming events cast their shadows before. Garcia already bowed out of the Salido fight with an injury to his nose. Will we see the same thing from Garcia on Saturday night? This is a pretty important fight for Garcia and Broner.

We’ve seen Broner get up off the deck after being knocked down twice by the bigger, stronger and older Marcos Maidana in their fight in 2013. We know that Broner can deal with adversity and keep fighting at a high level without surrendering.

It’s going to be difficult for Broner to walk Garcia down if he makes the decision to run around the ring. That’s going to take a good set of wheels on Broner’s part to catch up to Garcia and make him fight. I don’t know how long Garcia will be able to move though. He’s gained some weight obviously to fight Broner in their contract weight of 140 pounds on Saturday, and that’s going to make it tough on Garcia to move constantly for the duration of the fight.

It’ll be a risk on Garcia’s part if he tries to move too much. He’s gained weight for the fight, and he’s almost 30-years-old. It might be better for Garcia to trust his own boxing skills, chin and power to stand and make a fight of it against Broner instead of fleeing the battlefield. This fight is an important one, because Garcia is trying to become a star. To become a star, you need to fight like a star and that means holding your ground even when dealing with superior firepower from a bigger fighter in Broner. Garcia can’t flee to a foxhole when he starts getting shelled by Broner. He needs to stand and fight like he did against lesser fighters.

“You got to understand that a lot of times — I think I’ve mentioned this recently — matchmaking has a lot to do with how fighters look, you know what I mean?” said Ellerbe. “Bruce Trampler built Mikey Garcia. You know a lot of guys have big records and ain’t been in there. They haven’t been down in them battlefields,” said Ellerbe.

So it’s about how a fighter looks as well as how they fight? It sounds like Ellerbe is saying that Mikey Garcia is a manufactured fighter. Let’s look at Garcia’s resume for a moment to see who the best guys he’s fought and try and determine whether Broner would do the same job on them as Mikey did.

These are Mikey’s best opponents during his pro career:

– Roman “Rocky” Martinez

– Dejan Zlaticanin

– Elio Rojas

– Juan Carlos Burgos

– Orlando Salido

– Jonathan Victor Barros

– Juan Manuel Lopez

– Rafael Guzman

– Bernabe Concepcion

– Matt Remillard

– Olivier Lontchi

I like Garcia as a fighter, but there’s not much there in his resume that stacks up with the kind of fighter that Broner is. Broner would wipeout all of those fighters in my opinion and make it look easy. You can’t really tell anything about Garcia in looking at his resume because it’s so inflated with softer opposition.

“We’ve seen guys get up off the canvas and, you know, Adrien Broner is a dog,” said Ellerbe. ”The criticism that he’s faced thus far in his career, he’s solely responsible for all of that, but he’s also a hell of a fighter too.” said Ellerbe.

Broner is a very good fighter, and he’s shown a lot of heart in his fights against guys like Maidana, Porter, and Antonio DeMarco. Broner was outweighed by Porter and Maidana, and he still gave them big problems. Maidana said afterwards that Broner is the biggest puncher he’d ever fought before in his career. That’s a great compliment for Broner to receive by a big slugger like Maidana. Like I said, Broner got up off the canvas twice in the Maidana fight to come on strong at the end and give him problems.

”His trainer is the greatest trainer ever according to them,” said Ellberbe in talking about Mikey’s trainer Robert Garcia.. ”Good trainer, but at the end of the day I just think that stylistically Adrien just does everything better. He’s bigger and I don’t think enough’s been said about that. You know he’s not fighting a little guy…and they say the style ‘oh he’s a terrific boxer’ but it’s a little different,” said Ellberbe.

Robert Garcia is a good trainer, but his fighters have lost in the past and they looked mortal. I think it depends on the fighter. Robert isn’t going to be able to will talent to Mikey on Saturday night if he doesn’t have it in him to stand up to the big punches and the talent of Broner. Robert Garcia isn’t going to be getting inside the ring to run interference for Mikey to keep him from getting nailed by Broner.

Garcia is going to be out there by himself in the ring against Broner when the two of them get inside the ring at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. I hope for Mikey’s sake that he has the talent to get the job done, because this is going to be a much different animal he’s facing than the guys that have been lined up for him during his career by his match-makers at Top Rank.

”He’s fighting a different type of fighter — somebody that’s been in there…Adrien is going to keep coming’. Adrien’s not going to be running around he’s going to keep the pressure on him. He’s going to walk him down. I know what’s going to happen,” said Ellberbe.

Ellberbe seems to know how Top Rank has matched Garcia during the many years he was with them. Garcia is no longer with Top Rank, but he’s still not been fighting the top notch guys since he’s been back from his near 3-year layoff from boxing. Garcia has fought two times since he’s come back in fighting Elio Rojas and Zlaticanin. Those guys are nowhere near the same league of Broner.

Broner vs. Garcia will be televised on Saturday night on Showtime Boxing at 9:00 p.m. ET. Former junior middleweight champion Jermall Charlo will be making his middleweight debut in fighting Jorge Sebastian Heiland in the co-feature in a WBC 160 lb. title eliminator. The winner becomes the mandatory challenger to Gennady “GGG” Golovkin.

YouTube video