(Photo credit: Showtime/Esther Lin) By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Zab Judah (42-7, 29 KO’s) likes to remind boxing fans that he has more knockouts than his next opponent WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (25-0, 16 KO’s) has fights. Judah and Garcia will be fighting next month on February 9th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Judah is right about him having more knockout than the young 24-year-old Garcia has fights. However, Judah is 35-years-old and the fact that he has a lot of knockouts on his resume that stretch out 17 years is meaningless. 35 is old for a fighter and this is a sport where you don’t want to get old because it can be dangerous. A lot of Judah’s knockouts have come against less than spectacular opposition.
Judah said to the Boxing Channel “Danny Garcia has a problem. Angel Garcia is going to have to come inside the ring and pick him up. How do you counter someone who is faster than you? How you going to hit someone who hits harder than you? How you going to jab someone that can out-jab you? You don’t have no defense.”
Judah can hit hard but I don’t believe he can hit as hard as Garcia, and I don’t think he can take punishment from Garcia for 12 rounds without wilting big time under fire. Besides the youth of the two fighters, the difference in this fight seems to be that Garcia can take punishment without hitting the deck, but I don’t think Judah can. When he starts to take punishment he falls apart.
We saw that in Judah’s 5th round knockout loss to Amir Khan in July 2011, we saw it in Judah’s 9th round technical decision loss to Joshua Clottey in August 2008, and we saw it in Judah’s 11th round knockout loss to Miguel Cotto in June 2007.
For Judah to win this fight he’s going to have to get a much tougher beard so that he can take Garcia’s big shots, and he’s going to have to be able to take the pain of battle without quitting. We can’t have Judah sinking to the canvas if he gets hit on the belt line like he did in the Khan fight.
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