(Photo credit: Ed Diller/Dibella Entertainment) By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs) will be getting good money for his non-title fight against 34-year-old Paulie Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KOs) this Saturday night on Premier Boxing Champions on ESPN from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York,
Even though this fight is considered a mismatch in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans and no titles are on the line, Garcia will be getting $1.25 million. Malignaggi will be bringing in $500,000 as Garcia’s B-side opponent.
We don’t even know if Garcia has the talent to win a world title at his new weight at 147. To be sure, if Garcia is going to win a world title, he’s probably going to need to wait until WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. retires and gives up his two belts, because there’s no way that Garcia can beat him. Garcia won’t fight for the WBO title because it’s going to be in the hands of Tim Bradley soon, and he fights for Top Rank. Garcia’s adviser Al Haymon likely will never make that fight.
IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook figures to be too good for Garcia, so that’s not a good path for Garcia either. About the only thing Garcia can do is wait for Mayweather to vacate his titles in 2016, and hope that he can beat the likes of Shawn Porter, Amir Khan or Errol Spence Jr. for one or more of the straps. It’s going to be tough for Garcia, and it’ll be tougher still for him to hold onto one of the belts for any length of time because he’d need to beat someone like Spence, Khan or Porter to keep the belt, and I don’t think Garcia can do that.
Lamont Peterson is also someone who is talking about moving up in weight to the 147lb division, and he seems to have Garcia’s number after losing a close 12 round decision to him last April. In a rematch, I think Peterson would beat Garcia. So with all this, Garcia is getting a good payday this Saturday despite the fact that he’s likely to fail big time in this weight class and be forced to move back down to 140 to try and rejuvenate his career before long.
“Purses for Saturday night’s #PBConESPN card: Garcia $1.25M, Malignaggi $550k, Jacobs $500k, Mora $225k #boxing,” Dan Rafael said.
WBA middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs will be defending his title against former WBA 154lb champion Sergio Mora. Jacobs could increase his purses if he started fighting better opposition instead of guys like Mora, Caleb Truax and Jarrod Fletcher.
Jacobs is being matched very softly by his adviser Al Haymon, and that kind of tells you something about Jacobs. He’s kind of in a bind. He can’t get the big money until he starts fighting the quality fighters like Gennady Golovkin, but if he starts facing guys like him, he’ll get knocked out. So we’re seeing Jacobs just sitting back and milking his title for as long as possible against weak opposition instead of him trying to rise up and face the guys that would make him more popular and bring him more money.
The thing is Jacobs isn’t going to keep his title for very long even in milking it. Once he faces the likes of Tureanko Johnson, Chris Eubank Jr. or Arif Magomedov, he’s going to get knocked out and lose his title without having gotten a big payday. Jacobs will likely be facing Peter Quillin next if the World Boxing Association allow him to take a third consecutive voluntary defense. I don’t know why they would because usually fighters only get two voluntary defenses before they have to face their mandatory.
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