By Ryan Burton
Over the past few years former two-division champion Danny Garcia (34-1) and his father/trainer Angel have laughed off criticism that they "cherry pick" their opponents.
The "cherry picker" talk began when Garcia blew out an over matched Rod Salka in 2014. Salka had campaigned at lightweight and moved up to a catchweight of 142 pounds for the bout. Fights against past their primes Paulie Malignaggi, Robert Guerrero, Brandon Rios and against Samuel Vargas did little to diffuse that criticism.
Next up for Garcia is a fight for the vacant WBC welterweight strap against Shawn Porter at the Barclays Center. The fight takes place on September 8th and will be televised by Showtime.
Porter's father and trainer Kenny has also been critical of Garcia's past opponents and believes that the difference in class will be very evident on fight night.
"He has always been a guy that could fight at 147. He was just going down to a lower weight class so that he could have advantages and those advantages he has taken advantage of," Porter told BoxingScene.com.
"Now that he moved up to 147 I think they have said cherry picker for a reason. He has picked the guys he thought that he thought he could do well against. I am quite sure you would know what would happen to a guy like Rod Salka if he had got in the ring with Shawn Porter, a Brandon Rios if he had ever got in the ring with a Shawn Porter. We know what happened when Paulie Malignaggi got in the ring with Shawn Porter.
"We know what happened when Shawn Porter and Keith Thurman were in the ring. You had to stand on your feet the whole entire night. Then Keith gets in the ring with Danny and Keith says, 'Hey Danny you can't touch me because your feet don't work.' Danny couldn't touch him so they were booing that fight by the fourth or fifth round. Be real about what you really can do. The only thing that matters is on fight night what happens. If you look at some of those same instances where we are dealing with those same guys we are not having this kind of conversation because I think that those type of guys we just named they wouldn't have been able to compete with Shawn."
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