Angel Garcia will never be put on mute

LAS VEGAS – Angel Garcia was having none of it.

“They took the mics off the coaches!” the father/trainer of two-division titlist Danny Garcia said Thursday upon being reduced to a voiceless companion, after he has been so used to taking over news conferences like Thursday’s to penetrate the psyche of his son’s opponents.

In this case, the elder Garcia sought to test the limits of WBA middleweight titleholder Erislandy Lara (30-3-3, 18 KOs), who will defend his belt against Garcia’s son in Saturday night’s co-main event to the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez-Edgar Berlanga main event at T-Mobile Arena.

“If [opponents] say something stupid, I’m going to come at them,” Angel Garcia said. “I study you. What you say that comes out of your mouth, I bring it back to you … ‘You said that!’ People don’t like the truth.”

He reflected on his past greatest hits on the news-conference dais, how he so angered Amir Khan and Zab Judah that it affected their showings in the ring and set up victories achieved by his son’s boxing training.

“We’re supposed to have personalities in the sport … the fighters have personalities. Let’s show who’s the bad guy, who’s the good guy,” Angel Garcia said. “That stuff makes a lot of money.

“You can’t just go up there and say, ‘We’re gonna have a good fight.’ No, it’s, ‘I hate you!’”

Angel Garcia said he’s unsure how he would approach the mild-mannered Lara, 41, who successfully defended his belt in March with a second-round knockout of Michael Zerafa.

Garcia told one reporter that he thought Lara might be desperate for cash since he’s fighting after 40.

“At 40, you’re supposed to become a lover, not a fighter,” Garcia said.

“I’d call him an old man up there. … It might be the truth, but he’s an old man. He is humble, though, like Danny. He keeps his nose clean.”

At 36, Danny Garcia (37-3, 21 KOs) is fighting for just the second time in four years. The bout against Lara is being fought at a 157-pound limit, Angel Garcia said, and victory should clinch his son’s International Boxing Hall of Fame candidacy.

“I know what Danny can do. When he’s really focused, he can fight. His mind’s 100 percent right now,” Garcia said. “He’s already a Hall of Famer. When here, he’s a legend.”

Angel Garcia wore a T-shirt with his son’s initials largely emblazoned upon it over the word “legacy.”

In victory, Danny Garcia may opt to return to the talent-rich 154-pound division, where fighters such as Terence Crawford, Vergil Ortiz Jr., Tim Tszyu and Sebastian Fundora reign.

Angel Garcia said his son is committed to the sport’s most “basic tool, the jab,” and is dedicated to following a winning strategy like the unforgettable ones employed in both his 2012 WBC 140-pound title victory over Khan and his 2013 upset over Lucas Matthysse in the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Alvarez co-main event.

“With Khan, I knew we’d lose the first three rounds, that Khan would come fast,” Angel Garcia said. “Khan did his jab, then throw his right hand and lean in. … Well, when he leaned in, he had his chin up in the air. We timed it, threw the right hand.”

Garcia finished Khan in the fourth round.

Against the feared Matthysse, Angel Garcia said the focus was “smart pressure, then boxing, and when [Matthysse charged], run … don’t let him get off. We grabbed him, frustrated him. He came to us, we outboxed him. And even though Matthysse hit Danny so hard, he lost his mouthpiece once – and that hurts – he sucked up and won [by unanimous decision].”

After the fight, Angel Garcia confided that his son was “pissing blood” from all the kidney shots.

“That doesn’t kill you …” Garcia said.

Now comes the hour to seek a third division championship.

Father and son, together again, here to speak their truth.

Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.