Throughout the promotional build up for the mega showdown
between IBF Welterweight Champion Errol Spence (24-0)(21 KO’s) and current WBC Lightweight Champion Mikey Garcia (39-0)(30 KO’s), the common theme has been
that Garcia is simply put too small to contend with Spence. Granted Garcia, while going for a world
championship in a fifth weight class, will be jumping up two weight classes from
where he currently holds a championship.
Garcia has fought at the 140-pound limit before, winning the IBF version
of the championship, and while Spence will indeed be the biggest natural fighter
that Garcia has ever faced, he is an
experienced fighter that has been across the ring from every type of fighter
that you can think of stylistically.
It’s this type of experience that Garcia believes will guide
him to victory over the supremely talented Spence. Six years ago, while still fighting under the
Top Rank promotional banner, Garcia took on Juan Manuel Lopez for a portion of
the featherweight title. Garcia was
defending his title but wound up losing his title on the weight scale when he
failed to make weight. While the fight
went on (ironically in Dallas), Garcia wound up re-hydrating 14 pounds over
night and entered the ring the much larger man at 142 pounds. Since that fight, over the next six years, Garcia has consistently taken on tough challenges as his career continued to rise
both in the pound-for-pound rankings and heavier weight divisions.
Having flirted with the welterweight division before
competing against a couple of naturally bigger fighters at 140 pounds, Garcia recognized an opportunity to fight the
current welterweight champion that many within the boxing industry have dubbed
the next great champion. Spence presents
not just the biggest challenge in terms of physical size, but it’s also the
type of challenge that will plant Garcia atop the pound-for-pound tree of the
best fighters in the world.
For this challenge, Garcia enlisted the help of SNAC
(Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning) to help his body, gain the
proper type of strength for this monumental challenge. “We had to build more mass, a little more
muscle, leading up to this fight. But we
don’t want to compete against Errol with just size and muscle. I want to use my other talents. I want to use my other attributes, like my
speed, reaction time, my explosiveness,” Stated Garcia during a recent phone
interview. It’s that type of skill set
that has gotten Garcia to this point in his career.
Garcia throughout his career has established himself as a
fighter with some of the best timing during a fight. He may not have the most powerful jab, the fastest
jab, but he knows exactly when to throw it.
His foot movements along with the jab have helped him to control both
the pace of the fight and the range. The
fact that he has been able to do this against every style he has faced thus far
makes it even more impressive.
“We want to make sure that we kept all of my feet and muscle
work and I feel very good with the results.
We had a great training camp and I don’t think the size is what I’m
going to be using. So that’s what we
have focused on and making sure that everything else was done in the right way,”
stated Garcia. This is what makes this
fight such an intriguing matchup. We
will find out just how much all of the work with SNAC in order to truly gain
the right type of size to compete with Spence will translate into the actual
fight.
“We had to make adjustments, we had to figure out how to use
my range and my timing against a bigger guy, against a left-handed
fighter.” Garcia also went on to mention
that before the boxing training took over this camp, and he was still working
with SNAC, his weight got up to 160 pounds.
It was the work back at his brother's boxing gym that helped him to shed
the extra pounds of muscle and to get his weight back to the welterweight
division. While Spence will be
taking fight week to make weight getting the extra pounds off and re-hydrating
once the limit is met, Garcia will most
likely only gain a couple of pounds between the weigh-in and the start of round
one.
Granted, Errol Spence is indeed the biggest fighter Garcia
has ever faced when they fight. However,
size doesn’t always mean victory. Even
if the size is accompanied by a tremendous body attack and the type of power
that any fighter would love to possess, skills and a high ring I.Q. also have their place in boxing, especially
when you are dealing with fighters on this, the highest level of the
sport.
Garcia will look to establish the range against Spence with
his well-timed jab. It’s his jab along
with a hard-right hand after he pivots to his left to avoid the return punch
from Spence that Garcia will use early to score and warm up in the fight. If he can land his hard jab consistently on
Spence, whom for his part has never really shown that he naturally moves his
head as he moves forward, he may be able
to start to lock up Spence’s neck and this can have the same effect on an
opponent that a vicious body attack can.
If Garcia sees this working in his favor and he
is controlling the range and dictating the pace of the fight, look for him to start trying to get inside of
the longer arms of Spence and once on the inside rip power punches on
angles. It’s the common opinion of many
experts and boxing insiders that Spence’s body attack, hard left hands, and
good right jab will not allow any of this to play out in Garcia’s favor. Although this may be the case, the whole
world of boxing agrees about one thing: Garcia reaching out to take on this challenge to cement his legacy in
the sport is something that makes the sport so unique from every other one. It’s the reason why people are true fanatics
of the sport, because we all enjoy witnessing when a fighter like Garcia
reaches for greatness.
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