By Norm Frauenheim-
Terence Crawford’s pound-for-pound campaign got a strong endorsement Wednesday night in downtown Los Angeles with an ESPY for best fighter.
Mikey Garcia was there for the annual awards dinner across the street from Staples Center where he will continue his own campaign on July 28 against Robert Easter Jr.
Garcia had to wonder how he could get off the red carpet and on to the main stage. He’s where Crawford was a couple of years ago. He’s a consensus pound-for-pound contender. From list to mythical list, he’s in the top five. He’s third on this one, behind Crawford, Vasiliy Lomachenko at No. 2 and ahead of Gennady Golovkin at No. 4.
Garcia’s resume puts him there. He’s unbeaten at 38-0. Thirty stoppages keep him there. He’s won titles in four weight classes. He’s got everything except the victory or two that could put where Crawford was Wednesday night.
Getting there, in large part, is as political as it is pugilistic. There’s a sense that Garcia would already be No. 1 if had fought the right guy. For a while, internet imaginations were inflamed by the possibility of Garcia versus Lomachenko, No. 1 in many pound-for-pound debates and also a lightweight champion currently in rehab for shoulder surgery.
It made sense then. Still does. But Garcia’s divorce from Top Rank a few years ago makes it problematic at best. Lomachenko is a Top Rank fighter. So, too, is Crawford, who once was mentioned as a Garcia possibility when Crawford, a newly-minted welterweight champion was still at 140.
The best way, the only way perhaps, to eventually force a Lomachenko-Garcia is to turn Garcia into a star. That means big numbers at the box office and on television. For now, that brings Garcia to an arena just a few blocks of red carpet from that ESPY dinner the other night.
Garcia is back at home, fighting in Southern California for the first time in more than seven years. Garcia had fought in New York, Texas and Las Vegas.
Along the way, however, his identity as a Los Angeles fighter had been lost. Restoring it is one path toward reawakening and regaining his fan base in southern California.
“He will be the king of LA, then the king of boxing, all of those things,’’ said Richard Schaefer, who is promoting the July 28 Showtime card, which is scheduled for 15 fights. “You will see.’’
Lomachenko has repeatedly said he wants to fight Garcia. But numbers, personality and lingering tensions between Garcia and Top Rank could always get in the way.
Then what? Former welterweight great Manny Pacquiao, back in the headlines after his stoppage last week of Lucas Matthysse in his first KO since 2009, might be a possibility, especially at 140.
Garcia, also a 140-pound champion, says he is mostly comfortable at 135 these days.
“I’m comfortable in both divisions,’’ Garcia, 30, said during a conference call Thursday after Schaefer introduced him as the pound—for-pound best. “There is a little disadvantage at 140 against bigger guys. But I feel good at either.’’
Seemingly, that would eliminate 147. Then again, that might eliminate an option in the quest for the big prize at the end of that red carpet. Garcia hasn’t mentioned Crawford, perhaps because of his issues with Top Rank and/or simply because Crawford’s dramatic emergence is beginning to scare the hell out of just about everybody in the business.
But Garcia has mentioned Errol Spence Jr, another emerging welterweight who appears to be on a collision course with Crawford sometime during the next couple of years.
It’s hard to judge how Garcia, who is as fundamentally as sound as anybody in the current game, would fare against the bigger Spence.
But maybe an early indication of that will be there against Easter (21-0, 14 KOs), also a lightweight champion, yet with a couple of physical dimensions bigger than even Spence. Easter has huge advantages in height and reach over Garcia. The unbeaten Toledo welterweight is 5-foot-11, five inches taller than the 5-6 Garcia. More significant, Easter has a listed reach of 76 inches, eight more than Garcia’s 68.
Compare that to Spence. At 5-9 ½, he’s an inch-and-a-half shorter than Easter. Spence’s reach is listed as 72 inches, four less than Easter.
If – just if – Garcia can find a way over, under and through Easter’s key advantages, then maybe he can deal with Spence, who is ranked among the second five in most pound-for-pound debates.
“I’m willing to talk about fighting anybody,’’ said Garcia, who knows the issues and understands he needs the options.
