Mikey Garcia vs. Elio Rojas on July 30

By Boxing News - 06/27/2016 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: 28-year-old former two division world champion Mikey Garcia (34-0, 28 KOs) will be restarting his career on July 30th against 34-year-old light welterweight Elio Rojas (24-2, 14 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round fight on Showtime Boxing on the undercard of the Leo Santa Cruz vs. Carl Frampton featherweight fight at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Garcia hasn’t fought since his 12 round decision win over Juan Carlos Burgos in January 2014. Garcia hasn’t fought since then because he was embroiled in promotional issues with his past promoters at Top Rank. All that is now behind him, and he’s hoping to regain his place in the sport as one of the best fighters. Garcia says his fight against Rojas will be at light welterweight.

Garcia’s last fight was super featherweight, so he’ll be a couple divisions above that in facing Rojas.

Garcia thinks he’ll be just as good as he was before despite being out of the ring for two and a half years. It’s hard to imagine Garcia being the same fighter he was, especially with him fighting at light welterweight and lightweight. His power might not carry up to those divisions, and he’ll be dealing with a great deal of ring rust.

“I expect to pick-up right where I left off,” said Mikey to Showtime Boxing last Saturday. “I was a world champion, undefeated. I still am. I did not lose because I was injured or anything like that. I haven’t lost. I think I’ll be just as good as I was, probably even better. I’m hungrier now than I was before. I’ll get one fight in, this first fight against Elio Rojas. It will be somewhere between 135 and 140, but I do want to come back to 135. I want to gain a title there, in the lightweight division, and from there go after champion after champion to get the recognition I deserve again. It’s a whole different fight when you’re fighting a promoter in the court system. It takes a lot out of you, but I was fortunate to wait and hold my ground until the end and finally achieve what I wanted and take that victory. Now that it is all behind me, I look forward to the future of my career. The next stage of my career will be the best part of my career that people will remember me by,” said Garcia.

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I would be very surprised if Garcia is even half as good as he was in the past. Too much time has elapsed since he last fought, and it’s a lot more difficult for the smaller fighters to miss a lot of time in their careers and come back to the the fighter they were in the past.