By Dan Ambrose: Danny ‘Swift’ Garcia and ‘Showtime’ Shawn Porter will be competing for the vacant WBC welterweight title in nine days from now on September 8 on Showtime Boxing at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Porter (28-2-1, 17 KOs) is easily the second toughest opponent that Garcia will have faced during his career. The toughest guy Garcia has faced is Keith Thurman, and he lost to him. Porter isn’t far off from Thurman in terms of talent. Garcia-Porter will televised on Showtime starting at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT.
The keys to victory for Garcia are the following:
– Stay off the ropes
– Move frequently
– Tie Porter up
– Hit and run
– Jab
If Garcia stands and fights, he’s not going to last long against Porter. Garcia marks up badly around the face, and he doesn’t take body shots well. In his fight with Lamont Peterson in 2015, Garcia was walked down and battered to the head and body in the second half of the fight. Though Garcia wound up winning a 12 round majority decision, he was beaten up and looked like the loser of the encounter. You can argue that the only reason Garcia won the fight is because Peterson gave him too much respect in the first half of the contest.
When things got bad for Garcia in his fight with Matthysse, he resorted to spoiling and fouling to win the fight. The roughhouse tactics will likely be Garcia’s secondary plan if he can’t sand and beat Porter by fighting him. As such, we may see Garcia use these tried and true fouling techniques:
– Low blows
– Shoving
– Throwing elbows
– Holding
Garcia isn’t much of a fouler in comparison to some fighters, but when he does foul, he’s devastating. If you look at the low blows that Garcia was throwing against Matthysse, it was brutal to watch. Repeatedly Garcia was knocking Matthysse to the canvas with his low blows, which were well below the border and were thrown with incredible power. Garcia got away with the low blues until the 12th round. At that point in the fight, referee Tony Weeks finally took one point away from Garcia after he nailed Matthysse with a hard low blow. But he’d already let Garcia get away with low blows the entire fight, and there was nothing Matthysse could do at that stage other than to try and score a knockout.
Garcia (34-1, 20 KOs) came up empty when he stepped it up against WBA 147 pound champion Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman last year in March. Garcia came back from the loss to defeat the shell of Brandon ‘Bam Bam’ Rios by a 9th round knockout last February. Garcia has knocked out four of his last ten opponents. He has good punching power, but he’s been unable to knockout the good fighters. He’s been knocking out the flawed guys, which doesn’t bode well in him being able to KO a tough cookie like Porter.
Garcia’s father Angel Garcia says the 30-year-old Porter doesn’t bring anything to the table that Danny hasn’t seen before during his career. Angel sees this fight as a very winnable one for Garcia.
“Danny’s been there before! He can’t bring nothing to the table that we haven’t seen before,” Angel said to Fighhub about Porter. ”The politics making us look like we going to have a big fight. Isn’t Vegas tired of losing money? So you can’t listen to that s–t. The thing is, I know Danny. And I’m not saying it because he’s my son, I’m saying because he’s a great fighter, bro. And people got to respect that and people thinking Danny’s sweet.”
Garcia is a good fighter, but he’s not a great one. The way Garcia has looked during his career would suggest greatness. Garcia looked beatable even before his loss to Thurman last year. Garcia struggled to defeat Robert Guerrero, Lamont Peterson, Mauricio Herrera, Brandon Rios, Erik Morales [first fight] and Ashley Theophane. Those were not easy fights for Garcia, and he was lucky to get the wins over Herrera and Peterson. A lot of boxing fans thought Garcia should have lost the fight against those two. Even Theophane gave Garcia a lot of trouble.
The keys to victory for Shawn Porter are as follows:
– Pressure Garcia continuously. Force him to fight hard in every second of each round
– Work the body – Garcia does not like getting hit to the body. He can take a head shot well, but he crumbles when he’s hit to the midsection
– Use roughhouse tactics – it pays off for Porter when he roughs up his opponents. If Porter can head-butt, elbow and shove Garcia all night long, then he increases his chances of knocking him out.
– Keep your guard up to avoid getting hit by Garcia’s left hooks. That’s the best weapon in his arsenal, and he always looks to catch his opponents with those shots
– Stay close to Garcia to keep him from running. In Garcia’s best win of his career against Lucas Matthysse in 2013, he ran from him in the second half of the fight after he started getting hit hard
– Slip the jab and fire back right hands. Garcia will attempt to win the fight by using his jab like he did against Matthysse. If Garcia can dominate with his jab, then he’ll stay on the outside all night long and use that weapon alone.
“Danny got to win rounds from the beginning [against Porter],” Angel said. ”Use the jab, win rounds, and then after the third one Danny going to start nailing him. We not running! We just going to do some s–t in front of him that Danny’s going to do that [Porter’s] going to say ‘Wow, I never had nobody do this to me before.’”
Angel insists that Garcia won’t run against Porter, but I think that’s not going to be the case. If Porter starts getting to Garcia with his bull rushes, then it’s going to result in him using movement to try and escape. Unfortunately for Garcia, he’s a flat-footed fighter, who has poor mobility. If Garcia does decide to move, it would be a sign that things are going badly for him from the pressure that Porter is putting on him. Garcia won’t win the fight by running though. He’s going to have to have a good Plan-C for him to use once he starts using running as his Plan-B, because that’s not going to be the answer for him beating a talented pressure fighter like Porter. Garcia doesn’t have the same engine that Porter has, and he’s not going to be able to stand and trade with him in a fast pace fight. Garcia will need to come up with some tricks for him to win the fight.
”Matthysse was supposed to knock Danny out. Matthysse hit so hard that Matthysse flew Danny’s mouthpiece out; anybody else would have been sleeping,” Angel said.
Matthysse’s offense was neutralized by Garcia’s jab, movement and low blows. Matthysse would have had more of a chance of winning the fight if the referee had taken points away from Garcia earlier in the fight rather than waiting until the 12th round to finally take a point away.
Prediction
Porter has too much fire power and too good of an inside game for Garcia to win. Garcia is a good fighter, but he’s been found out a number of times in fights that he deserved losses. Porter will have too much firepower for Garcia to win this fight. I expect that Porter will wear Garcia down and knock him out by the 10th round.
