By Dan Ambrose: Danny Garcia says Terence Crawford isn’t even a top 10 contender in the welterweight division, and he needs to face Errol Spence Jr. for him to earn a fight against him. Spence (22-0 19 KOs) is the IBF welterweight champion at this time, whereas Garcia (33-1, 19 KOs) is just a contender, who lost his WBC 147 lb. title to Keith Thurman (28-0, 22 KOs) last year on March 4.
(Photo credit: Scott Hirano/SHOWTIME)
Crawford (32-0, 23 KOs) has moved up to 147, and he’ll be fighting WBO welterweight champion Jeff Horn (18-0-1, 12 KOs) on April 21 in Brisbane, Australia.
“The fight can always happen. When we fight, we want to make a lot of money,” said Danny Garcia to Fighthype, when asked if he’d be interested in facing Terence Crawford. “You got to build up to that. He still has got to make his way into the division. He didn’t fight nobody in the division yet. You can’t even say somebody is even top 10 if they never fought nobody in the division yet,” said Garcia.
It’s funny that when Garcia is asked if he’ll fight Crawford, he says he needs to fight Spence. It kind of reminds of what Floyd Mayweather Jr. used to do when he would be asked by the boxing fans about fighting a particular guy. Mayweather would bring up someone else’s name for that fighter to face instead of himself.
”To me, him and Spence got to fight,” said Garcia. ”There’s no way around it. It’s a good fight. I like that fight. I think they’re both kind of at the same level,” said Garcia.
Garcia is basically elevating himself above Spence by saying that Crawford must fight him to earn a fight against him. That’s the funny part. Garcia isn’t a world champion. He was soundly beaten by Keith Thurman. How is it that Garcia puts himself above an unbeaten world champion like Spence? It’s very peculiar. I don’t think Garcia wants any part of fighting Crawford, so he’s pushing him on Spence to fight. I’d like to see what Garcia will do if the winner of that fight starts calling him out.
Some boxing fans think Danny Garcia left the 140-lb. division to escape from having to fight Crawford. With Crawford now fighting in the same division as him at 147, he’s saying he needs to fight Spence. It would be sad if after that fight, Garcia says the winner of that match must face Thurman to earn a fight against him.
Danny Garcia has only fought 6 times at welterweight against these fighters:
• Rod Salka
• Lamont Peterson
• Paulie Malignaggi
• Robert Guerrero
• Samuel Vargas
• Keith Thurman
The only good fighter of that bunch of Thurman, and Garcia lost to him. Garcia will be fighting next month against Brandon Rios (34-3-1, 25 KOs) n February 17 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Garcia is taking another easy fight rather than accepting the offer from Spence to fight for his IBF welterweight title.
