By Stanley White: Danny ‘Swift’ Garcia (33-1, 19 KOs) seems to have caught the same bug that WBA/WBC welterweight champion Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman has come down with in becoming a once a year fighter.
Garcia, 29, hasn’t fought since losing to Thurman earlier this year by a 12 round split decision. Unfortunately for Garcia’s boxing fans, that’s the only fight for him in 2017. Garcia has nothing scheduled for the remainder of the year.
Given there’s not even any talk of Garcia’s next fight, it’s quite possible we won’t see him back inside the ring until the well into the first quarter of 2018.
5 of the top welterweights in the division have become once a year fighters for 2017. Here are the 5:
• Errol Spence Jr.
• Manny Pacquiao
• Danny Garcia
• Keith Thurman – ‘One Time’ Thurman has fought once per year in the last 2 years of his career
• Amir Khan
The welterweight division needs an active fighter like Gennady Golovkin type of guy that can be counted on to fight 3 to 4 times per year on one of the networks. The above mentioned welterweights just don’t fight enough. I
There was talk recently of Garcia fighting Brandon Rios, but that fight failed to take place. It was a bad fight anyway, as Rios has done little with his boxing career since his loss to Manny Pacquiao in 2013. Garcia vs. Rios would have been a good fight between 2011 and 2013, but it’s a fight that makes no sense now. It’s a good thing it didn’t happen. But just the fact that it was even being considered by Garcia gives you a pretty good idea where he’s at.
Danny Garcia hasn’t been fighting the cutting edge fighters for a while now aside from his one fight with Thurman. Since beating Lucas Matthysse in 2013, Garcia has fought these guys:
• Mauricio Herrera
• Rod Salka
• Lamont Peterson
• Paulie Malignaggi
• Robert Guerrero
• Samuel Vargas
• Keith Thurman
That’s only good fighter out of the entire bunch of 7 fighters. For all intents and purposes, Garcia has burned though his last 3 years of his career in fighting mostly weak opposition. There’s no excuse for Garcia fighting Malignaggi, Rod Salka, Herrera, Vargas and Guerrero. Even Peterson was a weak choice, considering that Viktor Postol was there waiting for his title shot against Garcia, which he never got against him. Garcia chose to move up to welterweight rather than fighting Postol. More than a few boxing fans saw that move as a ducking move on Garcia’s part. Garcia swerved the Postol fight and instead moved up to welterweight and fought Malignaggi.