Danny Garcia remained the premier boxing champion of the 143-pound division after scraping by scrappy Lamont Peterson at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn,New York, on Saturday night.
This title is fictitious?at least for now?though fitting after a fight that brought a number of further fictions about Garcia to bear. Garcia has credentials more impressive than those bestowed on him by an insular universe rewriting history: the footage of him knocking out Rod Salka and aged Erik Morales in the pre-fright vignettes did not authentically represent what Garcia brings. But Garcia?s greatest achievements?of which there are few, if we are being honest?are mostly buried under the trash hurled at his current run. His arrival at the expense of Amir Khan, his defanging of Lucas Matthysse, these are feats many years old, with the esteem he generated through them largely squandered.
Is the new perception of Garcia as an overprotected fraud justified? Or is the blowback he receives for two dubious victories and a farcical splattering of Salka excessive? There is no defense of the latter; most everyone responsible for that fight should spend a contemplative moment or two on the Catherine wheel. That Garcia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is condemned for suspect judging seems misguided, however. (Tim Bradley would certainly agree). Yes, Mauricio Herrera befuddled Garcia enough in the eyes of most to have deserved the victory; Peterson too, has a valid claim to inaccurate scorecards. But that is hardly Garcia?s fault. While it is easy to find his ?swag rapper? aesthetic laughable, perhaps the real issue with Garcia is that he is not nearly the fighter his preferential treatment suggests, and that he is allowed to purport greatness his ledger career cannot support. One wonders where the idea for such branding might have come from, if only for a fraction of a second.
What Garcia is as a fighter brings one of those aforementioned fictions into play. Garcia is often described as an unremarkable fighter, one who, while excelling at few facets of boxing is proficient enough at most to get over on the unpolished types who dominate the sport. The more Garcia fights, however, the less he appears to deserve the second part of that description?the more he looks like merely an unremarkable fighter. That this reevaluation throws shade on the merits of his opponents perhaps also explains some of the vitriol directed at Garcia, who is nothing special, yet good enough to beat more popular opponents.
But while nothing special, Garcia is a very good counter puncher, one whose exceptional timing and nerve augment his power. Stylistically then, he should have thrived against a pressure fighter like Peterson. Nothing of the sort happened. Does this mean a further revaluation is in order?
Garcia-Peterson was mostly a miscarriage of violence, with Peterson uncharacteristically skipping about the ring like Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road. However ungainly Peterson, Memphis, Tennessee, looked in his appropriation of Cuban boxing mastery, he was negative enough to leave Garcia, 142, and pretty much anyone without an infrared scope, with scant opportunity to line him up. What prompted this stylistic about face from Peterson? Perhaps knowing Garcia to be a counter-puncher, and knowing the struggles he has had making weight?troubles confirmed by Garcia?s second consecutive catchweight fight?Peterson wanted to tax his opponent?s fitness before moving in for the kill. If so, his strategy was well devised. Even with this more active approach though, Peterson again suffered from a slow start, not only because he failed to leave himself enough time to grind the tough Garcia down, but because his footloose tactics won him no love from the judges. With only a few rounds left, Peterson had to launch an all out attack, which meant opening himself up to Garcia?s counters.
This risk, however, hardly figured. Peterson, 143, crashed down on Garcia, salvaging a dreadful fight in the process. Garcia may have timed a reckless Khan and stared down Matthysse, but Peterson works a different brand of offense, one for which Garcia had no answer. Bobbing and weaving, Peterson closed the gap on Garcia before hammering him with off-rhythm shots. And it was Peterson, 33-3-1 (17), who punched between the punches, filling those split seconds in which Garcia most expected to find reprieve. Rather than endanger himself, Peterson?s relentlessness effectively boarded up whatever windows Garcia tried to throw bricks through. And while the catchweight was meant to benefit Garcia, Peterson certainly did not suffer from it. He entered the ring a middleweight, and barely blinked at any incoming fire. Still, his pirouetting in the first half of the fight, and Garcia?s toughness over the second were too much for Peterson to overcome. The judges awarded Garcia the victory via scores of 114-114, and 115-113 twice. On a night where at least one fiction bit the dust, this much remained true: it is good to be the house fighter.
If the pattern holds, Garcia, 30-0 (17), should find himself across the ring from some half-dead lightweight next, building back his confidence in a mockery of sportsmanship. Or perhaps he will go grave robbing at welterweight. Such are the expectations of this self-proclaimed ?pugilist superstar.? Is that description itself not just another fiction?
