By Sean Jones: IBF welterweight champion Errol ‘The Truth’ Spence Jr. (25-0, 21 KOs) took previously unbeaten four division world champion Mikey Garcia (39-1, 30 KOs) to school in beating him with ease by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night on PBC on Fox Sports PPV in front of a huge crowd of 47,525 at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The judges scores were 120-107, 120-108, and 120-108. Boxing News 24 scored it 120-107.
Garcia fought in a survival mode for 12 rounds, and never really put much of an effort to take the fight to the champion Spence. That was disappointing to watch.
Spence controlled the fight with his long reach and his powerful jab in the first eight rounds. He focused on just boxing the shorter 5’6″ Mikey, and he was quite effective fighting that way. From rounds 9 through 12, Spence turned it up a notch and began to give Garcia a real beating, and it was hard to watch due to the one-sided nature of it. Mikey did an excellent job of blocking a lot of the punches that Spence threw, but there was so many shots that he was throwing, it was impossible for all of the punches to be blocked. Spence landed a lot of body shots in the championship rounds that Garcia was forced to take.
Mikey’s best rounds were the first and fifth rounds, but still was out-hit by the bigger, stronger Spence.
If there’s any criticism you can make about Spence’s performance tonight was how relaxed he was. He fought Mikey in the same way he did Lamont Peterson last year. Spence appeared to take it easy on Peterson in six of the seven rounds before he was pulled out after the seventh. It looked in some ways like Spence was carrying Mikey, and not going for the knockout to finish him off the way he could have.
After this performance, it leaves Mikey with no other choice but to move back down to lightweight. He’s clearly too small to compete against welterweights. It would have been the same result if Mikey had fought some of the other top welterweights division. It might have been worse, as guys like Shawn Porter, Keith Thurman, Terence Crawford and Manny Pacquiao would have looked to knockout Mikey instead of toying with him the way Spence was doing. Mikey will look at the replay of his performance tonight and do the right thing by moving back down to lightweight, and take his chances against Vasyl Lomachenko.
