By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Angel Garcia has seen enough of WBA welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman’s past fights to know in his mind that his son WBC 147lb champion Danny “Swift” Garcia will destroy Thurman when the two of them meet up in the first quarter of 2017. That’s when their manager Al Haymon plans on matching them against each other.
While a lot of boxing fans see the Garcia-Thurman fight as being a competitive one, Angel believes that his son is going to destroy Thurman to take his WBA title from him. Angel specifically sees Danny’s body punching as being a problem for Thurman, because he was hurt in the past with a body shot in his fight against Luis Collazo. Angel thinks Garcia can hurt Thurman in the same way to take him out of there.
(Photo credit: Darryl Cobb/King’s Promotions/Premier Boxing Champions)
Garcia has a fight against Samuel Vargas first on November 12 that he needs to get out of the way. Angel isn’t worried about Vargas, because he knows that he’ll be no problem for Garcia. He’s just a tune-up opponent.
“After Sammy, we’re going to take care of business with Thurman. I promise you one thing. Danny will destroy Keith Thurman, because he’s never fought a guy like Danny Garcia. Danny fought a lot [of fighters] like Thurman. [Amir] Khan was a killer, man. I know the secret of his [Thurman] power. His hair.”
Garcia is going to need to raise his game considerably for him to beat Thurman. The Garcia that we saw laboring to beat Robert Guerrero and struggling against Lamont Peterson would lose to Thurman. I don’t think it’ll be a fight unless Garcia can land one of his big left hooks to hurt Thurman at some point in the fight.
Garcia can punch a little, but he’s had too many years of soft match-making. If Garcia were fighting Thurman immediately after his hard earned win over Lucas Matthysse back in 2013, then you would have to favor Garcia. That was a long time ago though, and Garcia has thrown away three years of his career fighting poor opposition. Garcia would have had to fight Vikor Postol if he hadn’t vacated his WBC title. That’s too bad because that was a fight that Garcia needed to take in order to prove himself as one of the three best fighters in the 140lb division at the time. Garcia didn’t take the fight, and some boxing fans think he moved up to avoid Postol.