Danny Garcia heavily favored to win WBC 147lb title tonight

By Boxing News - 01/23/2016 - Comments

Image: Danny Garcia heavily favored to win WBC 147lb title tonightBy Jim Dower: Unbeaten #2 WBC Danny “Swift” Garcia (31-0, 18 KOs) goes into tonight’s fight against the 32-year-old Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (33-3-1, 18 KOs) a heavy favorite to defeat him and win the vacant WBC welterweight title at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.

At Bovada, Garcia is listed as a -900 to beat #6 Guerrero to win the WBC 147lb title that was recently stripped from the retired Floyd Mayweather Jr. Guerrero is listed at +550. This isn’t a big surprise that the 27-year-old Garcia is such a heavy favorite.

Guerrero has not put in a good performance since his win over Andre Berto in November 2012. That was a long time ago, and Guerrero has consistently struggled since then in his four fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr., Yoshihiro Kamegai, Keith Thurman and Aron Martinez.

The only thing that you can say on Guerrero’s behalf to explain away his less than stellar performances in those fights is that he was facing good competition. However, Martinez and Kamegai are beatable guys and they would likely be defeated easily by the better fighters in the division like Kell Brook, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, Errol Spence Jr. and Tim Bradley.

Guerrero had to battle hard in life and death fights to defeat Martinez and Kamegai.

Garcia hasn’t been fighting very well either. When you take away the easier opponents Garcia has been put in with in the last four years, he’s not shined in fights against Mauricio Herrera, Lamont Peterson, Lucas Matthysse and Zab Judah. Those were all very competitive fights. Garcia got the nod in each one of them, but he did not look invincible.

Garcia looked like a lucky fighter. He clearly beat Matthysse, but he did it in an ugly way by landing blows, shoving, holding and moving. It was not the kind of performance that you like to see from someone receiving the kind of hype that Garcia has been receiving.

In other fights on the card, #12 WBC welterweight contender Sammy Vasquez (20-0, 14 KOs) is listed as a -700 favorite to defeat 2nd tier fighter Aaron Martinez (20-4-1, 4 KOs) in their 12 round WBC semi-eliminator bout. Martinez is listed as a +450 by Bovado.

Martinez is a good fighter, but he doesn’t have much punching power, and he’s lost two out of his last four fights. Martinez tends to run out of gas after six rounds in his fights, and this enables his opponents to come on and beat him. However, Martinez recently beat former two division world champion Devon Alexander by a 10 round unanimous decision last October.

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Martinez outworked Alexander to get the victory by using a lot of constant pressure and a high work rate. Before that fight, Martinez lost a questionable 10 round split decision to Robert Guerrero last year in June.

Martinez dropped Guerrero in the 4th round. However, Guerrero was able to take control over the fight in the last five rounds to win a controversial decision. Martinez fought well enough to deserve the decision, but he obviously didn’t do enough to impress the judges to get the victory over the better known Guerrero.

Unbeaten heavyweight prospect Dominic Breazeale (16-0, 14 KOs) is a narrow -160 favorite to defeat +130 Amir Mansour (22-1-1, 16 KOs) in their 10 round fight. Breazeale, a 2012 U.S Olympian, is coming off a questionable 10 round decision win over Fred Kassi last September, and that performance from Breazeale obviously has the oddsmakers questioning whether he has the talent to beat the 43-year-old Mansour.

The Garcia vs. Guerrero fight card will be televised on Premier Boxing Champions on Fox tonight starting at 8:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT.



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