Thanks TV Azteca for the Opportunity to interview me and give me a voice. pic.twitter.com/zYHas4Tf64

— Yuriorkis Gamboa (@gamboa) January 26, 2014

By Dan Ambrose: WBA interim lightweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa was at hand last night to witness WBO super featherweight champion Mikey Garcia’s poor performance in putting the Madison Square Garden fans asleep with his dull 12 round unanimous decision victory over challenger Juan Carlos Burgos (34-2-2, 20 KO’s) in New York.

Gamboa said on his social media site “There is booing in the garden and they not booing me. I am here so they going to have to bring the Marines. I am stepping into that ring. Just so you know, I want to go up. They don’t let me. I think I am going to fight Burgos instead.”

Gamboa wants to fight Mikey, but Mikey’s brother Robert Garcia is saying he’ll never let Mikey fight Gamboa. It looks like Robert might realize the limitations of Mikey.

The crowd hated the fight and literally booed for 12 rounds, hoping that it would cause Mikey to take some chances and fight with a little more urgency instead of like a statue. It didn’t work, because Mikey fought in a methodical manner in every round, throwing shots and then standing back and staring at Burgos, as if waiting for him to fall down like Mikey’s opposition had mostly fallen while he campaigned as a featherweight. While some boxing fans put the blame on Burgos for the fight lacking action, you can’t put the blame entirely on him because it was Mikey who was fighting like he was afraid to let his hands go after getting clipped by a hard left hook from Burgos in the 2nd round. That shot turned Mikey into an ultra-careful fighter unable or unwilling to let his hands go. To be sure, Mikey got the decision by the scores of 118-110, 118-110, 119-109, but it was one of the worst performances from a name fighter on HBO for some time.

As bad as Mikey looked last night, HBO’s suits should say something about it to Mikey’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank, something along the lines of Mikey’s fights not being interesting enough to show on their network. If that’s the song that Guillermo Rigondeaux is hearing, then it should be song to Mikey as well, because his fights are far more dull to watch than Rigondeaux’s, in my view. At least when you’re watching Rigondeaux, he lets his hands go and is a lot busier than Mikey. Rigondeaux would have had no fear of stalking Burgos down and taking him out with a body shot if he were in the ring with him last night instead of Mikey. Rigondeaux wouldn’t have been afraid to neutralize Burgos’s left hook.