Golden Boy Prez: I'm Surprised Mikey Garcia Passed on Linares

By Steve Kim

For those who were hoping for a lightweight unification bout between WBC champion Mikey Garcia and WBA belt-holder Jorge Linares - there is bad news.

For the time being, that fight is dead. Last week Garcia - who had called out Linares on Twitter a couple of weeks ago - met with Golden Boy Promotions on Wednesday to discuss the possibility.

But Eric Gomez, the president of Golden Boy advised BoxingScene.com on Wednesday afternoon - "Ultimately Mikey passed on the fight. He's going to take another offer that he has. He had another fight in late January. So he's going to take that."

Word is that Garcia could be facing IBF titlist, Robert Easter. Gomez says that Garcia never specified what his plans are.

"He just said he had a huge offer to fight January 27th."

Gomez admitted, "I'm a little surprised because he told me he wanted Linares, that was his priority. So we made him a great offer, an incredible offer. No options, he went on the record and said he didn't want to do options, 'why not just do a one-off?' So we gave him that but he didn't want the fight."

The offer made to Golden Boy for the Linares fight was a 50-50 financial split and whichever network bid highest on the fight would televise it.

"HBO was interested and made an offer, I relayed that information and told him, 'Look, if you're comfortable with Showtime and Showtime's willing to pay more money, we have no problem,''' Gomez stated,

As for Linares, who's coming of a split decision victory against Luke Campbell on September 23rd at the Forum in Los Angeles, he will return in the first quarter of 2018.

"There's a few options, we were already working on a few plans," explained Gomez. "We got an offer from Eddie Hearn to do a rematch with Luke Campbell in the U.K. so that's another possibility. But there's a couple of other things out there that we're going to look at that are interesting.

Garcia-Linares would have been one of the most anticipated fights of the upcoming year. Now, both fighters will go down different paths for the time being.

A disappointed Gomez says - "It's a shame we couldn't get it done. At Golden Boy we're committed to making the best fights. I felt we bent over backwards to make Garcia-Linares. It's unfortunate."

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com