By Chris Williams: WBO super featherweight champion Mikey Garcia (33-0, 28 KO’s) is ready to move up in weight and face Manny Pacquiao as soon as he takes care of his opponent Juan Carlos Burgos (30-1-2, 20 KO’s) this Saturday night at the Madison Square Garden Theater, in New York, New York, USA. Mikey is hoping that Pacquiao will be willing to fight him at 135 or 140. If not, Mikey’s probably in big trouble because he’s much too skinny to put on weight quick enough to face Pacquiao in September, which seems to be the month that Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is thinking of matching them up.
If the fight is offered to Mikey for September, he’ll have to take it because there’s a chance that Pacquiao might not re-sign with Top Rank when his contract with them expires at the end of the year. Once Pacquiao is gone from Top Rank, I doubt he’ll bother doing Arum a favor and fighting Mikey in 2015 or 2016. Pacquiao won’t need to, because he’ll be off to bigger and better things and his days of fighting lightweights with Top Rank will likely be done.
“Of course I’d like to fight Manny,” Mikey said to USA Today. “I don’t know a fighter who wouldn’t want to fight Manny. I’ve got to win my fights and gain some weight and strength and build my body to go up in weight, because I have several divisions to move up before I can fight Manny. I’m sure if the fight was offered at 135 or even 140, maybe two fights from now, I’m sure I would take it.”
Don’t pay any attention to what Mikey is saying about how he’d take the fight if it were offered to him two fights from now. If the fight is offered to him in September, he’s obviously going to take it. If he says no to the fight and Pacquiao then leaves Top Rank, then Mikey will be kicking himself for the rest of his career at the lost chance. The chances are that Mikey is going to get beaten soon anyway as he moves up in weight. Arum is interested in having Mikey fight Vasyl Lomachenko and Yuriorkis Gamboa, and both of those guys would have a very good chance of beating Mikey. If Arum is serious about wanting to keep Mikey intact for the Pacquiao fight, he needs to keep his way from Lomachenko and Gamboa, because both of those guys would likely beat him and expose him before he even gets close to fighting Pacquiao.
Mikey’s strength and conditioning trainer Alex Ariza will do a good job of building Mikey’s skinny frame up for him to fight Pacquiao, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to have welterweight power. Mikey will just be a pumped up featherweight fighting in a weight class that he has no business fighting in. At featherweight and super featherweight, Mikey’s a big puncher, but when he moves up to lightweight, light welterweight and welterweight, he’s just going to be an average fighter.