Danny Garcia has been in this exact position before: fighting in Las Vegas, on Sept. 14, in the co-main event of a major pay-per-view card headlined by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.
In 2013, he took on Lucas Matthysse at 140 pounds in a fight most people expected him to lose, but which he won by unanimous decision after dropping his rival in the 11th round. On that day, Alvarez came up short against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a junior middleweight bout. This time around, Canelo is meeting Edgar Berlanga in a defense of his unified super middleweight titles and Garcia is in the co-main against a man who, once again, virtually everyone expects to beat him: middleweight belt holder Erislandy Lara.
“It definitely went quick,” said Garcia of the time that has elapsed since that night against Matthysse, arguably the greatest victory of his lengthy career. “Like, me being 36? It’s crazy. I’ll be 40 in four years.”
Even though the last few years of his career have been marked by close calls and periods of inactivity, Garcia (37-3, 21 KOs) says his sheer longevity is something of which he’s proud.
“To me, it’s amazing to be here at the same level 11 years later. That’s how I look at it,” Garcia told a small group of reporters at the MGM Grand on Thursday. Not many fighters can make it to that level for even a couple of years, so for me to still be here … to me, that’s an accomplishment in itself.”
Garcia was an undefeated champion at 140 pounds and a belt holder and title contender at 147 pounds. He has never fought at middleweight before, which raises the question: After just one outing in the last four years, why come back to face Lara, now perhaps the best man at middleweight after many years of being a dangerous contender six pounds lower? The answer, Garcia said, is simply that he could.
“I felt like, politically, it was a very easy fight to get made,” he explained. “I wanted to be a three-division world champion, and at the time I called him out, he was the middleweight champion and [Jermell] Charlo had all the belts at 154 pounds – so that was kind of locked in, because he had mandatories. So I felt like it would be an easy fight to get made, to give me an opportunity to win in another division.”
For much of his time at junior middleweight, Lara (30-3-3, 18 KOs) was known as a tricky, elusive boxer; as the 41-year-old has aged, he has become much more flat-footed and willing to engage. And while that might suggest that the smaller Garcia is at risk of taking some serious damage, his always-voluble father and trainer Angel insists it works to their advantage.
“He just wants to knock everybody out,” Angel Garcia said of Lara. “And you can’t knock everybody out, right? You’ll be looking for a knockout all night. We’re not worried about that. We’re just going to go out there and sit, and when he throws that left hand, we have a chance. He could bring rocks, throw rocks at Danny, jump to the moon and back. It doesn’t faze us. Listen, 11 years ago, he was in the same predicament with Matthysse. Danny was the champion, but everybody doubted him. The odds were crazy. And Danny went out there 11 years ago, at the same time, Sept. 14, and got the job done.”
Alvarez will be aiming for a very different outcome for his fight than the one he had on that night in 2013. But for Danny Garcia, if history repeats itself, that will be just fine.
Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcasted about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com.
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