By Keith Idec
Keith Thurman, who’s vacationing in Asia, fired shots at Danny Garcia from halfway around the world Wednesday.
Garcia fired right back Thursday, when the unbeaten WBC welterweight champion discussed his likely showdown with Thurman, the WBA welterweight champion, in March.
“I’m coming to unify them titles,” Garcia told BoxingScene.com following a press conference in Philadelphia to announce his November 12 fight against Samuel Vargas. “I’ve been in there with the best fighters. At the end of the day, he’s just another hyped-up fighter that they built up to fight me.”
His stinging assessment aside, Garcia was impressed with how Thurman and Shawn Porter performed during their highly entertaining, 12-round fight June 25 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. After Thurman defeated Porter by unanimous decision that night, he talked trash about Garcia avoiding him.
“That was a tremendous fight,” Garcia said. “I don’t take nothing away from Thurman and Porter. That was a great fight for boxing. I’m happy it was on PBC because, at the end of the day, anything that’s on PBC, I like and I’m happy about it. And now I’ve just got to get past this guy, and we’ve got to give the fans another good fight.”
Thurman (27-0, 22 KOs), of Clearwater, Florida, sent out a Tweet on Wednesday night that stated: Enjoy your last cherry of the year … I’ll be waiting to take that green belt in 2017! #OneTime #KOs4Life #2Belts
Thurman added a picture of a fictitious container of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, with the name, Cherry Garcia, and Garcia’s head shot on it.
Spike will televise the November 12 bout between Philadelphia’s Garcia (32-0, 18 KOs) and Colombia’s Vargas (25-2-1, 13 KOs) from Temple University’s Liacouras Center.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
