Mikey Garcia says he’s moving to super featherweight as an experiment

By Boxing News - 06/16/2013 - Comments

garcia515By Chris Williams: Fresh off his impressive 4th round TKO win last night against Juan Manuel Lopez (33-3, 30 KO’s) in Dallas, Texas, former WBO featherweight champion Mikey Garcia (32-0, 27 KO’s) says he’s planning on moving up to the super featherweight [130 lbs] as an experiment to see how he feels in this weight class.

If he does well at this weight, Mikey will stay. If not, then he plans on working on his diet and coming back down to 126 lbs.

Mikey said this to HBO about his plans: “I still think I can fight at the featherweight limit. With the proper training and proper diet, I feel like I can still do it. I got a little sick. I’m sure a lot of fighters go through that too, and that is probably the reason why I had problems making weight. We did the work in sparring and training, except the diet it the one that affected me in the end. That’s [moving up to super featherweight] is still an option. I would like to try out 130. If I feel comfortable there, I will stay there. If I feel my division is 126 still, I can still try and come back down.”

It sounds as if Mikey is kind of torn between staying at 126 and moving up four pounds to 130. When you look at the difference between the two divisions, it’s pretty clear that featherweight has a lot more options for big fights than there is for Mikey at super featherweight.

The featherweight division has guys like Abner Mares, Chris John, Evgeny Gradovich, Gary Russell Jr., Orlando Cruz, Daniel Ponce De Leon, Billy Dib, Jhonny Gonzalez, and many, many more. There’s also the possibility of Mikey fighting super bantamweights like Guillermo Rigondeaux and Victor Terrazas if Mikey were to stay at featherweight.

If Mikey moves up to super featherweight, the options are more limited. There aren’t a lot of well-known fighters at 130 besides Roman Martinez. Mikey would be in a situation where he would have to face lightweights like Yuriorkis Gamboa, Terrence Crawford, Richard Abril, Ricky Burns, and Miguel Vazquez if he wanted to get big fights. I’m not sure that Mikey can beat the likes Gamboa and Crawford. And Abril Vazquez would be potentially tough fights for him.

If Mikey stays at 126, he could dominate for a long time. I think Rigondeaux might beat him, but it’s doubtful that Mikey’s promoter Bob Arum will allow that fight to happen because Mikey’s a bigger name than Rigondeaux and Arum won’t want Rigondeaux doing to Mikey what he did to Arum’s popular fighter Nonito Donaire.

If Mikey moves up to super featherweight, the pressure on him to fight good lightweights will be tremendous and if he turns them down, it’ll look bad, like he’s a fighter that is only willing to face guys that are tailor-made for him and over-matched, like the past his best Juan Manuel Lopez was last night.

You put Mikey in with someone like Crawford and Gamboa, and those are legit 50-50 fights where Mikey might not win. Last night, the whole world knew Mikey was going to win.



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