By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Stephen Espinoza expected Showtime to televise separate bouts featuring Adrien Broner and Mikey Garcia over the summer.
The Showtime executive was as pleasantly surprised as anyone when their unforeseen fight started to come together last week, particularly because it happened so quickly. Showtime announced late Thursday morning that Broner (33-2, 24 KOs) and Garcia (36-0, 30 KOs) will meet July 29 in a 12-round, 140-pound fight.
The Garcia-Broner bout is expected to take place at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, but the site has not been officially announced.
“It’s no exaggeration to say it’s a dream matchup,” Espinoza told BoxingScene.com before a press event to honor Errol Spence Jr. on Thursday in Manhattan. “It’s one of those that you sort of hope and wish it can be made. And this time, with these two guys, there really was no hesitation. The conversation started right about the time the rumors started last week.
“And to get to that point, really to a fight done in about a week, a fight of this magnitude, really says a lot for how much each guy wanted the fight. There really was no hesitation on either side. Nobody had to twist any arms. They both said, ‘Great fight. Let’s do it.’ It started as a conversation of, ‘Well, what if?’ Then ‘What if’ became a reality.”
Garcia, the WBC lightweight champion, had hoped to face WBA 135-pound champion Jorge Linares (42-3, 27 KOs) in a partial unification fight this summer. Once the Broner bout became a realistic possibility, though, Garcia embraced a move up from 135 pounds to 140.
“There were other fights [available for them], but there weren’t other fights of that stature,” Espinoza said. “Even a unification fight for Mikey isn’t of the stature that a Broner fight would be. So it really came down to both guys saying, ‘Look, if we’re gonna do a fight, we might as well do the biggest fight we can do.’ And that led them to each other.”
Espinoza expects the buildup toward their fight to be almost as fun as the fight itself.
“It’s an interesting clash of styles and personalities,” Espinoza said. “I like both of the guys personally, but they’re about as different as you get. That’s part of the fun of this whole event. You’ve got two very different guys – different outside the ring, different inside the ring, different personally, and it’ll be intriguing to see how it plays out.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.