by David P. Greisman

Angel Garcia, the father and trainer of 140-pound champion Danny Garcia, spoke with BoxingScene.com on Oct. 25, prior to the weigh-in for Bernard Hopkins vs. Karo Murat.

Garcia: “I want the best for him. I mean, he wants to go to welter. Danny doesn’t have a problem making ’40. He sacrifices. He doesn’t starve. He’ll sacrifice. He wants to go to welter. I do, too, but I want him to do it the right way. I want to do it slowly, blend him into welterweight. I’m not just going to jump him to 147. I’m going to blend him 147. I’ll take our next fight at ’44, ’43, catch weight. If not, we fight ’40. There’s always somebody out there for you.”

BoxingScene.com: If you want to blend him into welterweight, that would mean not going straight into a big fight like a Mayweather?

Garcia: “No. That’s the dumb way. That’s the dumb way of doing. That’s just being greedy. We’re all right financially. We’re not super rich, but we’re OK. We don’t want to do it like that. I want to do it the right way. I want to do it the way it’s supposed to be done. You blend him into a welterweight. What happens is just because you can fight at ’40 doesn’t mean you can fight at ’47.

“That’s what people think, but when you fight the Top 10 motherf***ers, then all that shit goes out the door. So I want to blend him in, so when he fights the Top 10 — because you can fight ’47 and fight nobody, well, considered nobody, because everybody is somebody. But what I’m saying is names, because when you get to the Top 10, and then you melt away, then what happens to you? ‘I thought you was that killer.’ So I want to do it the right way, the way it’s supposed to be done.”

BoxingScene.com: Are there certain fighters you saw try to make that move, which showed you why not to do that?

Garcia: “No. I know what to do. I know what’s convenient for me and Danny, and that’s the right way of doing it.”

BoxingScene.com: So if you keep him at 140, who would you like to see him face?

Garcia: “Whatever. Al [Haymon, Garcia’s adviser] takes care of that. That’s Al’s job. My job is to train him. His job is to fight. Al Haymon’s job is to match him. Whatever Al wants him to do, that’s what we do.”

BoxingScene.com: I thought Danny put on a great performance against Lucas Matthysse. What was the game plan?

Garcia: “Like I said before, the game plan was to do what he did, which was beat the sh*t out of him, exposed him. But the thing was this: Matthysse never fought a fighter like Danny. Everybody had the opposite. Everybody had the champion, Danny, losing, when he’s the champion. But the thing was, if you really looked it, Matthysse never fought a person like Danny.

“Danny fought guys when he was coming up in the boxing world as a professional, he fought guys like Matthysse already. You don’t pamper nobody, because when you step it up, then you know you ain’t that guy people thought you were. Danny fought guys like him at the beginning of his career. Matthysse never fought a guy like Danny, a true champion, a real technician fighter, a gifted fighter.

“They had him as a killer. He wasn’t a killer. We exposed him to what he really is. He was 32 nobodies, 4 we know of, the 4 Americans, 2 he lost to. The other 29, whatever, we never heard of these people. We exposed him for what he really was. He’s a good fighter, don’t get me wrong, because somebody might think they can do the same that Danny did to Matthysse, and he’ll knock them out. The thing is this: Either that fight made him better, or it killed him, or it destroyed his career.”

Pick up a copy of David’s new book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com