Mikey Garcia Is Set to Define the Next Era of Boxing

Quickly "The next few years will be the best of my career. There's no other boxer who's in a position like I'm in." By Greg Bishop July 23, 2018  Mikey Garcia is on the phone from Los Angeles, where he will fight Robert Easter Jr. in a lightweight unification bout on Saturday at the Staples Center. He's told the premise of this column, that because he is only 30 years old, and because he can slide up and down in some of boxing's most relevant and interesting divisions, and because he's not tied to any one promoter, he more than any other boxer may define what the post-Mayweather, post-prime-Pacquiao era of boxing looks like.  "The next few years will be the best of my career," he says. "There's no other boxer who's in a position like I'm in."  He's not wrong. There are fighters (Vasiliy Lomachenko, Terence Crawford, Gennady Golovkin) who rank above Garcia on most pound-for-pound lists. There are more accomplished boxers like Golovkin with his record tying 20-straight title defenses; more well known boxers, like the immensely popular Canelo Alvarez; and more active fighters, who didn't like Garcia lose two peak years over a promotional spat. But none of those boxers are situated like Garcia is currently situated: high on the P4P lists but with more flexibility and possibility than his counterparts. "I want to leave my name cemented in the history of boxing," he says.  It's all there for Garcia, who didn't fight from January 2014 until July 2016–the two worst years, he says, of his professional life. Garcia was delayed by a protracted legal battle with Top Rank Boxing, his former promotional company, and rather than simply finish out his contract, he sued Top Rank and waited to box again until they reached a settlement.  He has fought four times since in a way that's indicative of what's possible for him in the years ahead. 1) Tune-up TKO of Elio Rojas. 2) Snagged lightweight belt in old division by knocking out Dejan Zlaticanin. 3) and 4) Moved up to super lightweight, beating Adrien Broner and Sergey Lipinets, securing two belts in that division. Now, he slides back down to lightweight to unify with Easter.  The layoff, Garcia says now, actually helped more than it hindered him. For two years, he didn't sustain any real punishment, and while he hated not fighting, in his absence the divisions he now looks to fight in–the four slots between 130 and 147–were stocked with new, exciting champions. That could mean potential match-ups with Gervonta Davis (130), Lomachenko (130, 135), Maurice Hooker (140), Crawford (140, 147), Danny Garcia (147), Keith Thurman (147) and Errol Spence Jr. (147), among many others. Garcia is the only boxer with that kind of range and thus that kind of possibility, should 1) 147 not be too big for him; it may be and 2) he continue to win.  "We've seen other fighters' careers take off in similar situations," Garcia says. "Like Oscar De La Hoya after he left Top Rank. Or Floyd Mayweather after he left Top