Angel Garcia: 'You’ll Get Rich' Betting on Danny Against Thurman

By Keith Idec

PHILADELPHIA – Angel Garcia knows the odds on his son’s fight against Keith Thurman.

Danny Garcia’s father/trainer also knows his son has won countless fights he was supposed to lose from the time he was a young kid growing up in the rough Juniata Park neighborhood in North Philly. Thus the fact that handicappers have installed Thurman as about a 2½-to-1 favorite over Danny Garcia doesn’t faze the polarizing Angel Garcia one bit.

“I hope they’re not going by that sh*t,” Angel Garcia said Wednesday during a media workout at Garcia’s gym. “It’s 2-to-1. I don’t give a sh*t. You guys will get rich. You’re gonna get rich. Bet your house.”

Thurman (27-0, 22 KOs), of Clearwater, Florida, and Philadelphia’s Garcia (33-0, 19 KOs) will fight for Thurman’s WBA world and Garcia’s WBC world welterweight titles March 4 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. CBS will televise their 147-pound showdown on free TV.

Garcia has beaten better opposition overall than Thurman, but Thurman generally is considered a better boxer and a more natural welterweight. Garcia, a former WBA/WBC 140-pound champion, moved up to welterweight only a year-and-a-half ago.

Talk of Thurman being favored over his son hasn’t come up much during training camp for a perhaps the biggest fight of Danny Garcia’s nine-year pro career.

“It’s a free country,” Angel Garcia said. “You could do whatever you wanna do. You could bet your money on whoever you wanna bet your money. You don’t have to bet your money on me. It’s your money. You worked for it. You earned it. That’s your cash.

“If the people wanna people see Danny as the underdog, that don’t matter. At the end of the night, I know what Danny’s gonna bring to the table. It’s gonna be a great fight for Danny. At the end of the night, ‘And now the new WBA champion of the world.’ ”

Angel Garcia cautioned those thinking Thurman will win because he is the betting favorite that they’re making a mistake.

“Danny’s been the underdog since the amateurs,” Angel Garcia said. “It’s always been like that. I used to take him to places all over the United States. And people used to say, ‘Yo, you got a 112?’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, I got him.’ [They’d say], ‘Call him over.’ I’d bring him over, they’d look at him, they’d size him up. Then I’d hear people talking in the background. ‘Oh, that white boy gonna get his ass kicked.’ They thought Danny was a white boy because he’s got green eyes and he’s light-skinned. White boys could fight, too.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.