Mikey Garcia leaving it up to his promoter about who he fights

By Chris Williams: WBO super featherweight champion Mikey Garcia (33-0, 28 KO’s) says he’s leaving it solely in the hands of his promoter and his manager in terms of who he’ll be facing next. Rather than saying he wants this fighter or that fighter, Mikey is leaving his career decisions in the hands of others.

His promoter Bob Arum wants Mikey to fight Juan Carlos Burgos (30-1-2, 20 KO’s), which has to be seen as a step down from Mikey’s recent win over WBO champion Roman Martinez. Mikey doesn’t seem to mind though if he fights Burgos.

“It’s really not up to me as far as what the next fight is or whatever,” Mikey said to RingTV. “I would leave that up to my manager and my promoter to say who they want to put me in against. If they want me to defend my title first, then I’ll defend my title.”

I would suggest that Mikey not be so passive about his career and instead be a little more assertive in making strong suggestions about his career decisions because if he lets others make all of his decisions for him, he might be too pleased with the outcome at the very end. We’ve already seen fighters like Yuriorkis Gamboa and Juan Manuel Lopez miss out on a big money fight that they could have had together because their promoter Bob Arum wanted the fight to marinate longer. Arum ended up waiting too long and Lopez was beaten in back to back fights by Orlando Salido.

Now it’s Mikey’s turn. The fight to be made is against Gamboa, and if Arum is talking about wanting to put Mikey in with Burgos instead, which is a step down from the Roman Martinez fight, then Mikey needs to ask why.

If the excuse is that they can’t get Gamboa, then Mikey needs to tell Arum that he’ll be moving up in weight to the lightweight division to challenge for a title against the likes of Ricky Burns, Miguel Vazquez and Richard Abril instead of wasting his time fighting the likes of Burgos. What we don’t want to happen is Mikey waiting for years for a fight against Gamboa to marinate and then the fight failing to happen because either Mikey or Gamboa gets beaten. As much as I like Mikey as a fighter, he hardly looked invincible against Martinez. Mikey is a decent fighter, but he’s not someone that is going to be able to beat everyone without getting beaten eventually. He’s not that kind of a fighter.