By Dan Ambrose: The WBC did Danny Garcia and Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (33-3-1, 18 KOs) a huge gift by allowing them to fight for their vacant WBC welterweight title on January 23.
On Tuesday of this week, the WBC announced that they were letting the Garcia-Guerrero fight be for the vacant WBC 147lb strap. The move let Guerrero skip over four higher ranking contenders in the WBC rankings.
Here are the fighters that Guerrero was able to skip past to fight for the WBC welterweight title:
1. Amir Khan
3. Shawn Porter
4. Lamont Peterson
5. Andre Berto
The move also made things a lot easier for Danny Garcia, because instead of him fighting the unquestionably tougher fighters like Khan, Porter and Peterson, he only needs to beat the 32-year-old Guerrero to win the vacant WBC title. As I stated before, Guerrero has lost two out of his last four fights in the last three years. Guerrero’s career is not going well right now, and there are more than a few fans who believe he’s finished and washed up as a fighter. Guerrero lost badly to Keith Thurman in 2015, and he should have lost to Aron Martinez in his last fight in June.
The winner of the Guerrero vs. Garcia fight will need to take at least one tough fight if they want to keep the belt beyond 2016. The WBC made Amir Khan the #1 mandatory challenger to the Guerrero-Garcia fight. This is a pretty empty move by the WBC because Khan has shown no desire to fight for the WBC title. Khan only wants to fight the big names, and he doesn’t seem intrigued by the thought of fighting for world titles.
You can say that Khan’s focus is not on the belts, but rather just the big names. The thing is Khan would have likely gotten the big names that he wants so badly if he had kept busy by fighting the best for the last three years instead of him padding his resume with weak contenders. Khan has been fighting contenders technically, but he’s not been fighting the really good contenders that would have a chance to beat him like Shawn Porter and Errol Spence.
The WBC will have two semi-final fights between Lamont Peterson and Andre Berto, and Miguel Barrionuevo and Azael Cosio. I’ve never heard of either of those fighters, and it’s unknown where the WBC found them to include in their little tournament to get a shot at the WBC belt.
Out of all those fights, Garcia, the fighter that I see easily beating Guerrero, will have only one hard fight and that’s against Lamont Peterson. Khan would be a potentially tough fight for Garcia if he were to accept the fight with him, but I don’t think for a second that Khan is going to take that fight. I believe that Khan is just looking for that one payday and he’ll stay inactive until he finally gets it at some point.
It’s too bad that we couldn’t see Garcia fight the best in the welterweight division like Shawn Porter or Errol Spence, because those are the guys that should be really competing for the WBC title. Porter has been waiting on a fight against Keith Thurman ever since Porter beat Adrien Broner last summer. Thurman is making Porter wait and wait, and it’ll be funny if he never gets the fight.
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