Mikey Garcia vs. Dejan Zlaticanin on January 28

By Boxing News - 10/21/2016 - Comments

Mikey Garcia

By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Mikey Garcia (35-0, 29 KOs) will be challenging World Boxing Council lightweight champion Dejan Zlaticanin (22-0, 15 KOs) on the undercard of the Carl Frampton vs. Leo Santa Cruz rematch on January 28 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This will be the soon to be 29-year-old Garcia’s second fight of his comeback. Mikey came off of a two and a half year layoff last July in stopping former two-time WBC featherweight champion Elio Rojas in the 5th round after knocking him down four times in the fight.

It’s pretty risky for Garcia to take on a fighter as good as Zlaticanin in only his second fight back from such a long layoff. When you see guys like heavyweight David Haye taking it slow by fighting fringe contenders in his own comeback, it’s refreshing to see a fighter like Mikey take such a serious threat as the 5’4” Zlaticanin so early in his comeback.

Mikey has previously captured world titles at featherweight and super featherweight. He had promotional problems that kept him out of the ring after his 12 round decision win over Juan Carlos Burgos in January 2014. Had Mikey kept fighting for the last two years, he likely would have been involved in some really big fights. It’s unfortunate that he had to miss all that time in his career.

Garcia looked really powerful in stopping Elio Rojas last July. Each time Garcia would land his left hook, he had Rojas in trouble in that fight. The speed and power that Garcia showed in that fight was very impressive.

It’s questionable whether Zlaticanin will be able to stand up to that kind of power from Garcia. If he can take Garcia’s power, he might be able to cause him trouble with his own punching power. Garcia hasn’t fought anyone with the kind of power that Zlaticanin possesses since his win over Roman Martinez three years ago in November 2013. That wasn’t much of a fight because Martinez was taking heavy shots the entire time before he was finally stopped in the 8th round.

The 32-year-old Zlaticanin has looked unbeatable in his last six fights in beating the likes of Ricky Burns, Petr Petrov, Ivan Redkach, and Franklin Mamani. Zlaticanin’s win over Ricky Burns was especially impressive, because he dominated the former champion in beating him by a 12 round split decision in his own city in Glasgow, Scotland.

The fight was totally one-sided from start to finish, but one judge, John Keane, scored the fight in Burns’ favor 115-113. Zlaticanin clearly won the fight, and showed that Burns can beat at home in Scotland. Since that fight, Zlaticanin has defeated Alex Bone, Ivan Redkach and Franklin Mamani. Zlaticanin’s win over Mamani won him the vacant WBC World lightweight title.

The winner of the Zlaticanin vs. Mikey Garcia fight could soon be facing WBC lightweight ‘Champion in Reess’ Jorge Linares. Right now, Linares out with an injury sustained in his recent 12 round decision win over WBA World lightweight champion Anthony Crolla on September 24. However, once Linares is back in action, we could see him facing the winner of the Zlaticanin vs. Garcia fight if he wishes to hold onto his WBC title.

It might be better for Linares to just hold onto his WBA title rather than mixing I up against Zlaticanin or Garcia. Those would be tough fights for Linares to tackle when he comes back from his injury. Linares had all kinds of problems just beating Crolla, who is clearly a few steps below Garcia and Zlaticanin in the talent department.

It’s likely that Garcia won’t stay at lightweight for too long if he beats Zlaticanin. There’s a couple of good fights that Mikey could potentially take against Linares and WBO champion Terry Flanagan. Once those fights are out of the way for Mikey, then he needs to move up to light welterweight to take on the likes of WBC/WBO 140lb champion Terence Crawford, WBA champ Ricky Burns, Adrien Broner, Viktor Postol or IBF champ Eduard Troyanovsky. Those are the only really interesting fights for Garcia at 140. However, it remains to be seen whether his old promoters at Top Rank would allow Garcia to fight Crawford or Postol. It would obviously be in Top Rank’s best interest to let Garcia fight those guys if they want to turn Crawford and Postol into stars. But if they choose to keep the fights from taking place due to Garcia no longer being with Top Rank, then it’ll be Crawford and Postol’s loss. They need to be able to fight guys outside of Top Rank for them to become stars.

The Garcia vs. Zlaticanin fight could upstage the main event between Frampton and Santa Cruz. Garcia and Zlaticanin are more likely to mix it up in a war than what we’ll see in the main event between Frampton and Santa Cruz. Frampton will be looking to move around the ring to escape the pressure from Santa Cruz like he did at times in their first fight earlier this year in July.

Frampton used a lot of movement in his wins over Scott Quigg and Kiko Martinez as well. The Frampton vs. Santa Cruz II rematch could turn out to be a disappointment if Sana Cruz isn’t able to cut off the ring to force Frampton into a dog fight on January 28. That’s why it might be up to the co-feature bout between Garcia and Zlaticanin to make the fight card an entertaining one.