By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Mikey Garcia (34-0, 28 KOs) says he’ll gladly face WBO light welterweight champion Terence Crawford (27-0, 19 KOs) next if his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank will let him end his contract and walk away from the company so that he can look in another direction with his career.
Garcia, 28, hasn’t fought since January of 2014 in beating Juan Carlos Burgos by a 12 round decision. Since then, Garcia hasn’t fought since then due to him having promotional problems with Top Rank. Garcia wants to move on and Top Rank doesn’t appear to be interested in letting him. It’s unclear whether Garcia will sacrifice his career this way or if he’ll eventually give in and continue the remainder of his contract with Top Rank.
“If Top Rank offered me a fight with Crawford and says, ‘That’s it! That’s your last fight,’ I would take it…I’d beat him, walk away with the belt, and leave Top Rank free and clear…but that’s not the way they work,” Garcia said to Fighthype. “They’d need 3 fights from me…6 fights…that’s a whole new contract.”
If Top Rank is willing to let Mikey wait like this, then they might be better off taking Mikey on his offer and letting him fight Crawford or some other Top Rank fighter and then letting him go. If Mikey waits too much longer, he’ll age and lose the skills that he once had. At that point neither he nor Top Rank wins. It’s hard to say how determined Mikey is to stay firm to his desire to move on. If he’s willing to sacrifice his career, then it’s better for Top Rank to offer Mikey a face saving way out of this mess.
I don’t know that Mikey would be able to beat Crawford coming off of a long layoff. It would be a tough fight even if Mikey was still fighting on a regular basis. But it’s a lot tougher now with him having been out of the ring since early last year. However, I doubt that Arum will offer the fight to Mikey to let him out of his contract the easy way.
Arum seems more interested in matching Crawford against Manny Pacquiao than anybody. If Pacquiao tells Arum ‘No thanks,’ then it’s likely that Arum will match Crawford against the winner of the Tim Bradley vs. Brandon Rios fight if they don’t wind up facing Pacquiao.