Elijah Garcia made a mistake taking this fight

Terrell Gausha thinks Elijah Garcia has bitten off more than he can chew.

On a virtual press conference Tuesday for the Sebastian Fundora-Chordale Booker fight card on March 22, the 37-year-old Gausha spoke confidently about his upcoming fight with Elijah Garcia, 21. Gausha has fought several champions in and around 154lbs, usually losing close decisions. Most recently, Gausha lost a wide unanimous decision to Carlos Adames, who retained his WBC middleweight title on February 22 with a draw against Hamzah Sheeraz in Riyadh.

“I’ll fight anybody,” Gausha said. “I just love to fight.”

Asked whether he thought Garcia made a mistake by lining up a fight with him, Gausha said, “I definitely do. I respect him taking the fight, but he made a mistake taking this fight. But I gotta take my hat off to him, because he like me – we’re fighters, we like to fight the best. I’ve been preparing to give the fans a good fight, and hopefully he been doing the same.”

Though Gausha, 24-4-1 (12 KOs) tends to fall short against the elite, he has fought to a draw against Austin Trout and close decision losses to Erislandy Lara and Tim Tszyu, the latter of whom he knocked down.

Garcia, whose technical difficulties prevented him from attending the call, is a 16-1 (13 KOs) prospect who in his last fight took his first career loss to Kyrone Davis by split decision. Gausha rejected the tag of gatekeeper and asserts that fighting the southpaw Garcia is nothing new to him, citing his experience against southpaws Lara, Trout and Erickson Lubin.

Gausha also gave Garcia credit for his pressure-first style. “I’ve been training real hard to keep up with that pace.”

BoxingScene asked Gausha what a win over Garcia would do for his standing in the middleweight division, considering that he has fought most of his career at junior middleweight.

“I feel like it’s a good fight for me, it’d really establish myself at 160 by him being young, and one of the guys that bring the action.

“I feel like it’d put me in a good step for a world title soon. Obviously I still want to fight people like Lara, have some redemption, but my job is to worry about Elijah Garcia first, and then we get the big fights after this.”

Gausha stressed the importance of taking part in an entertaining fight, having been criticized for not doing so in the past against Lubin. “It’s not all about winning, it’s how you win,” Gausha said. “I dominate this fight, shut him down, then I can be up for big fights.”Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.