By Jacoby Sharee
First of all I would like to congratulate Mikey Garcia for unifying the WBC and IBF lightweight titles on Saturday night, you beat Robert Easter Jr. handing him his first loss and remained undefeated.
Now I will say this clearly, you need to stay at 135 pounds because you have no business at 147 against the monster puncher Errol Spence Jr.
Mikey called Spence out after the fight and his own brother Robert and father Eduardo have gone on record saying they don’t want him to fight Spence Jr. they only want him to fight the washed up Manny Pacquiao at 147 because that is an easy win for them and a big money fight.
If only Mikey had the common sense his family has. I believe he will come back down to his senses because he couldn’t even hurt the 5 foot 11 Easter Jr., the knock down was clearly a off balance shot that put Easter down, he popped up immediately and wasn’t even dazed.
If he can’t hurt guys at 135 or 140 pounds how is he going to hurt the longer, taller and much stronger Errol Spence Jr?
From what I’ve seen of Mikey he is an okay fighter, too flat footed, not much head movement and he doesn’t have speed. A fighter like Spence would eat him alive, the first straight left hand from the southpaw stance will rock Mikey and he might second guess himself in the ring, I wouldn’t be surprised if he quits or his corner throws the towel to prevent him from being hurt even further.
If I were his advisor, I would tell him only go for the Pacquiao fight to win the WBA belt and claim himself as a 5 division champion, and vacate that belt immediately like he did when he won the belt against Sergey Lipinets at 140 pounds.
Mikey can’t deal with movement and his punch output is very low, he is not a one punch KO guy anymore since the guys he will have to face will be much bigger than him, before he was knocking guys out because he was a weight bully, but he won’t be able to break down Spence, Thurman, Porter or even Danny Garcia.
Enjoy your win and stay lean year round so you can make the lightweight division for a long time because guys at 140 and 147 will test that chin especially since you are a stationary target.
Try to unify all the belts in your division against the other champions Vasyl Lomachenko (WBA) and Ray Beltran (WBO) and try and make title defenses against mandatory opponents.
I see Mikey beating both Lomachenko and Beltran. Loma is smaller and he got dropped by Jorge Linares, Mikey should find a home for that straight punch down the middle, and Beltran won the WBO belt as a gimme title, he is way past his best years and it would be an easy win for Mikey because he is tailor-made for him.
If he wants to have a longer boxing career and retire undefeated just stay in one division because not everyone can climb weight classes successfully it takes a special fighter like a Floyd Mayweather Jr. to do that, and you can’t be slow or flat footed with no head movement to hang against the big boys.
