Garcia?s fundamentals are sound and however workmanlike his performance, it was more than his opponent could contend with?
Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, in a fight televised live on Showtime Championship Boxing, Mikey Garcia (37-0, 30 KOs), the undefeated three-division champion from Oxnard, California, outclassed Adrien Broner (33-3, 24 KOs), the four-division champion from Cincinnati, Ohio, over 12 rounds.
The final scores were 117-111 (Eric Marlinski) and 116-112 twice (Don Ackerman and Steve Weisfeld).
Fighting out of the red corner in brown trunks, Garcia fought a smart, strategic, tactical fight. He is not a flashy fighter, but his fundamentals are sound and however workmanlike his performance, it was more than his opponent could contend with.
Broner, fighting out of the blue corner in red and green trunks trimmed in white, gave away the first two-thirds of the fight. He wasn?t clowning, as he was eating knuckle sandwiches for most of the night, as Garcia doubled Broner?s punch output .
?This is definitely one of my best performances ever,? said Garcia after the fight. ?I think I controlled the fight in the early rounds and I kept the activity up. He is a great fighter who has great skills. I was the superior fighter tonight.?
After receiving a tongue-lashing in his corner, Broner finally began fighting as if he cared, as if he wanted to win, in the championship rounds. He stayed off the ropes. He drew first blood from Mikey?s nose. But Broner?s problems outside the ring have affected his performances in the ring and tonight?s desultory performance was no different.
?It was a good fight,? Broner said. ?At the end of the day, I come to fight, I come to win and I put my heart on the line.?
If Broner had left his post-fight remarks at that the booing might have been less vociferous and even less hostile. But Broner is Broner and while he never was and will never be a top 10 pound-for-pound fighter, he hasn?t until now flirted with being a gatekeeper. That?s not to say he won?t again wear a championship belt, given the proliferation of titles, weight classes and sanctioning bodies with their stranglehold sport. But he?s a classic underachiever, in addition to being a head case, and while he peaked whenever he peaked, it looks like it?s downhill from here.
?At the end of the day I?m still AB,? said Broner to Jim Gray. ?I?m still about billions. I?m still the ?Can Man.??
That may be so, but at this point who really cares?
According to CompuBox, Garcia landed 244 of 783 total punches thrown to Broner?s 125 of 400. Garcia landed more jabs. He landed more power punches. It wasn?t a scintillating performance, but it was more than enough to defeat a man who is destined to experience more defeats in the future.
