Garcia v Judah: A boxing conundrum

By Boxing News - 01/25/2013 - Comments

Zab Judah(Photo credit: Ester Lin/Showtime) By Ben Walton: A pugilistic storm is brewing. On Feb 9th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, hometown veteran Zab Judah, takes on the young unbeaten WBA/WBC champion Danny swift Garcia. Now to many fans and scribes this will be nothing short of an easy nights work at the office for young Danny, out-boxing and possibly stopping the old, past it Judah. But I really think we need to look at this a little deeper before we completely dispel any notion of Zab Judah doing the impossible.

First lets look at Zab. Former 5 time world champ over 2 weight divisions, still a fighter who has decent speed, good skills and a good seasoned boxing brain. But now a man who at 35 has without doubt seen his better days pass him by. But is a 35 year old Zab really that bad to not even be in with a shout against in my opinion, a very flat footed, basic skilled, relative novice in Danny Garcia?

The Danny Garcia story really exploded on 14th July 2012, when he unified the division with a stunning 4th round KO of Amir Khan in Las Vegas. Up until the end of the 3rd round khan was ahead on points and looked to be comfortably out boxing Garcia.

Khan made a positive start and used his speed advantage to land a number of solid combinations during the opening two rounds. However, the Brit then hit the floor for the first time as a light-welterweight late on in round three, after Garcia landed a monster left hook to his neck/ear. That was pretty much the end of the road for the Brit and in the next round Garcia was declared world champ.

BUT – khan is supposed to get knocked out isn’t he if he gets tagged? I personally think if khan had of boxed more defensively and used ring smarts he would of probably won every round on the judges scorecards.
Then we have a hardly surprising KO of a completely shot, shell of a fighter in Eric Morales. A guy he would not live with in his prime.

Garcia to me is pretty basic, ok he seems to have one helluva left hook on him but apart from power is there really that much else? A guy with good movement, good defense, speed and a good brain beats him all day long. Even a guy with OK movement, defense and speed should beat him if he has the cerebral skills to put his tools to their best uses.

Angel Garcia, a man who really should learn to let his brain work before his bazooka mouth, has been as always, very vocal on what “we” are going to do to Zab. I can’t help but think that these guys have overlooked Zab by thinking “yeah he’s had his day, he lost to Tszyu in his prime he also lost to khan who we destroyed” etc.. But I’m sorry I just don’t see Garcia as being in the same league as Tszyu , and the old adage that – A beats C who beat B, does not mean that A beats B? rings true here..

I like Danny Garcia, he’s a nice kid for sure and deserves to be world champion after beating khan fair and square last year, but I really do think he is one of the weaker champions to unify the division in a long while.

Its only a matter of time in my opinion before his reign comes to an end. An end, which could well be on Feb 9th in Brooklyn..



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