If anyone were to
ask me about last Saturday’s fight between Danny Garcia and Mauricio Herrera,
the first thing I would probably say was that Garcia dodged a bullet and kept
his title by the slimmest of margins. Granted, I thought Herrera should have
deserved the nod against the undefeated champion, but close fights usually go
to the house fighter and that’s exactly what we saw last weekend.
While Garcia lives
to fight another day, a big question from last weekend remains unanswered: How
good is Danny Garcia?
We’ve seen Garcia
look absolutely spectacular in dismantling Lucas Matthysse, destroying Erik
Morales and rescuing himself from certain defeat by knocking out Amir Khan; yet
we’ve seen him underperform in perceived gimme fights against Zab Judah and
Herrera last weekend.
One bad performance
isn’t enough to write off the so-called “Puerto Rican (Who speaks less Spanish
than a fish, no doubt),” but the win over Herrera has dulled the luster for the
young champion. Herrera has been nothing but a tough fight for anybody he’s
been in the ring with, including a much clearer win over Ruslan Provodnikov
than current Welterweight champion Timothy Bradley, but he wasn’t picked to be
a tough night out for the future star.
Garcia has made it
to where he is now not because he does one thing spectacularly, but rather
because he does a lot of things equally well. Where he doesn’t have the hand or
foot speed to overwhelm an opponent and his punch output is normal for his
weight class, he makes up with in intelligence and the ability to stick to the
game plan.
Herrera’s awkward
style and repeated success in landing big shots against Garcia threw him off of
that plan and even at the urge of his loud-mouthed father Angel, Garcia didn’t
really come to life until the later rounds of the fight. Now unlike Khan or
Matthysse who tried to bludgeon him with speed or power, Herrera used his mind and
skill to nearly pull off the upset and that is what is the most surprising
takeaway from last weekend.
If Garcia couldn’t
figure out a seemingly pedestrian opponent like Herrera, then how will he fare
against more cerebral opponents like IBF champion Lamont Peterson or any of the
skilled fighters in the Welterweight division?
Now unless Garcia
is either a.) Aiming for sponsorship for pedialyte or b.) Trying his hardest to
land the roll of Skeletor in the upcoming Masters of the Universe movie, there’s
no way he’ll stay at 140 beyond the near miss. However, the path he’ll choose
at 147 isn’t as clear-cut due to the fact that everybody good has made a fight.
The fall guys like
Paulie Malignaggi and Luis Collazo are being casted to part in the coming months,
with Malignaggi facing off against recently crowned champ Shawn Porter and
Collazo very likely facing “Crybaby” Khan on the Floyd Mayweather exhibition
this May. Keith Thurman is too dangerous and isn't recognizable enough to the casual fan, Adrien Broner is
in a rebuilding stage and Robert Guerrero is once again in the process of sabotaging
his career.
Who does that
leave? As of right now, it’d look like Andre Berto, an unwanted rematch with
Judah, Josesito Lopez or (heaven forbid) Devon Alexander. It’s going to take a
lot more than a good serving of leftovers to make Garcia’s 2015 date with
Mayweather a mega-event, but he’s the odd man out yet the next on deck for a
huge payday at the expense of his undefeated record.
A fight with
Peterson is still on the table as well as a rematch with Matthysse should he
rebound from his humbling loss, but Garcia is going to have to hit his mark
with whomever he fights next. With a Mayweather date looming, Golden Boy and Al
Haymon needs to re-establish Garcia as the genuine article and must convince
the public, especially now more than ever, that he’s as good as it gets.
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