By Manuel Perez: Welterweight Irving Garcia (17-3-3, 8 KOs) finally won a fight after two prior technical decisions in 2008, earning a 10-round unanimous decision over Chris Smith (21-6-1, 13 KOs) on Friday night at the Coliseum Fransisco Deyda, in Hatillo, Puerto Rico. Garcia, 29, who came close to beating Yuriy Nuzhnenko in April before the fight was stopped in the 10th due to cuts that Nuzhnenko sustained, won all three judges’ scorecards 98-92, 97-93 and 97-93. However, I personally had Smith winning six rounds to four and didn’t see how the judges could have scored it for Garcia.
Smith fought well from rounds four through nine, pressuring Garcia hard, landing the much more telling blows and looking to easily win the rounds. Garcia fought well mainly in the first three rounds, in which he was able to land left hooks and right hands. After that, though, Smith came on and began to pressure Garcia nonstop, staying on top of him and forcing him to fight at close range where Garcia looked out of his element. The bout was fought in Puerto Rico, where Garcia currently lives. Like I said, I had Smith winning the fight easily, but if I wanted to be really kind to Garcia, I would call it a draw, but that would be stretching things quite a bit given his poor performance.
However, the scores were out of this world, as if the judges’ were watching a completely different fight altogether. All I could think is that perhaps they were confused which fighter was which, thinking that Garcia was Smith. In that case, I would feel very comfortable with the 98-92, 97-93 and 97-93 scores going for Smith, because he looked like the clear winner of the fight, not Garcia, who looked like the loser in my book.
Garcia did fight well in the first three rounds, landing a lot of jabs. Smith, who had done nothing up until the 3rd round, started coming on in the round, applying a lot of pressure to Garcia, backing him up and forcing him to fight on his back foot. Garcia didn’t look good, seeming clumsy as if he didn’t know how to fight going backwards. I did give him the round, though, but just barely. He looked terrible and got hit a lot by Smith.
In the 4th round, Smith came out and began pressuring Garcia immediately, staying in close and hitting him with a constant flow of punches to the body and head. And although Garcia would fire back with his own shots, his were coming in at a much less rate than the heavy flow of punches from Smith.
This trend continued through the 9th round, as Smith seemed to have too much fire power for Garcia, and was fighting him on the inside where Garcia couldn’t get leverage on his punches. In the 10th round, both fighters fought hard with toe to toe action, and Garcia appeared to get the better of it. However, he looked to have given away six consecutive rounds leading up to the 10th, meaning that Garcia needed either a knockdown to make it a draw or a knockout to win. He got neither.