By Dan Ambrose: The big favorite Danny Garcia (32-0, 18 KOs) easily won a 12 round unanimous decision over #6 WBC Robert Guerrero (33-4-1, 18 KOs) on Saturday night to capture the vacant WBC welterweight title at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The final judges’ scores were 116-112, 116-112 and 116-112. I didn’t agree with the scoring at all.
I thought Guerrero won 5 rounds. If he had been able to do just a little bit more in the last four rounds, I would have had him winning the fight. Of course, with the way the judges scored the fight tonight, I think Guerrero would have needed a knockout to win. He was in a hopeless situation.
Guerrero fought well enough to deserve to win four out of the first five rounds. I had Guerrero winning rounds 1, 3, 4 and 5. After the 5th, Garcia started holding, pot shotting and moving a great deal. The movement and holding that Garcia was doing made the fight very boring to watch for me. However, at least Garcia wasn’t throwing nonstop low blows like he did in his fight against Lucas Matthysse in 2013.
I was not impressed at all with what I saw from Garcia. This guy doesn’t belong as a champion at welterweight in my view. When you compare the job that Keith Thurman did on Guerrero to the job Garcia did, you can see that Garcia is not in the same class as Thurman. He’s not even close. I think Garcia would be blown out of the water if he ever fought someone with punching power and size like Thurman. They’re both with Al Haymon, so I don’t think he’s going to ever put them in with each other. It’s better for him if he has two champions at welterweight rather than one.
The fight was won by Garcia outside of the ring when his adviser Al Haymon matched him up against an old timer in Guerrero rather than a dangerous young fighter like Errol Spence Jr. or Shawn Porter and the WBC blessed the fight as a title fight rather than just a fight between a couple contenders.
Before tonight’s fight, Guerrero had been beaten in 2 out of his last 4 fights, and he had business at all whatsoever fighting for a world title in my view. That’s on the WBC for lowering their standards in picking guys to fight for their titles. You could understand Garcia fighting for a world title, given that he was unbeaten, but definitely not Guerrero.
Even Garcia was a terrible choice, because he’d only fought three times at welterweight before tonight’s fight and two of the fights were catch-weight jobs against Lamont Peterson and little lightweight Rod Salka. Garcia should have been fighting a legimitate talented contender with a great record like Errol Spence instead of a fighter with two defeats in his last four fights.
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