Say what you want about Mikey Garcia but...

[Curtis Harper]

See the following post:

Mikey Garcia can have it real easy and fight at 140, and wait for Super featherweights and Lightweights to come up and kick their assess at 140. Just rule 140, babysit it, call out 130-140 pounders and make easy money.

That's what GGG did, that's what Spence is doing.

Mikey went up and tried to see if he beat the best at 147 and failed.

IMHO, he didn't try to win. He tried, and succeeded, in merely surviving. ''I didn't quit.'' !!!!

If you listen to his -
''I'm smarter.''
''I have more skills.''
''All he has is size.''
''He's not going to be ready for MY power.''
Yadayada

....and see if any of that actually happened. Again, I know guys should be ultra confident and promote their fight. But when a guy stinks it up afterwards, cmon, now.

As for moving up, and ?!?!?
He was a ww for that fight (hopefully his last ww fight).

[daggum]

See the following post:

Mikey Garcia can have it real easy and fight at 140, and wait for Super featherweights and Lightweights to come up and kick their assess at 140. Just rule 140, babysit it, call out 130-140 pounders and make easy money.

That's what GGG did, that's what Spence is doing.

Mikey went up and tried to see if he beat the best at 147 and failed. He genuinely thought he could win, and he talked as such, but he lost. Oh well, go on with your career and go back to 140. Spence was too much. It could be that Spence is the only welterweight that is "too much" for Mikey, and Spence is probably too much for anyone not named Crawford there. It could be that Mikey can beat most WW's there right now, he should've tried his shot at a lesser opponent, maybe DSG, Brook, or Horn. But he decided to fight the very best, the guy who is ducked by the rest, and he lost. Okay don't praise him for fighting him, but also, it's unfair to try to kick him cause he lost a lopsided fight. After all, he came up from 135 to fight a guy no one in that guy's weight class wanted to fight.

he tried to make 3 million dollars. and he did it! did he try to win the fight? no, not really. he didnt throw many punches or adjust in any way that would have put him in position to actually win the fight. im sure he would have taken the victory if it fell into his lap but when that didn't happen he packed it in and survived clottey style

[Cobra Curry]

What were people expecting to see here? Leonard vs Duran?
It was as clear as day that Mikey stood no chance. The only surprise for me was the respect Errol showed in the first half of the fight, keeping his distance etc.
Hopefully we can stop with these silly mismatches now.

[Rip Chudd]

There are no moral victories in boxing. Anybody with a lot of experience can survive if thats their only goal. And comparing Garcia to Marquez is dumb. They are two different calibre of fighters.

I agree with this. I believe Andre Ward said something similar recently that there are no moral victories in boxing

[jas]

the fight was like hopkins vs kovalev. kovalev out-skilled hopkins and battered him late. hopkins was in survival mode like mikey was


and would rather have seen mikey in compeititive fights, this attitude of lavishing praise on the likes of brook when he fought ggg, khan when he fought canelo is the kind of wrong attitude that leads to these fights actually happening

mikey fought to survive, spence snap and speed on his punches was not quite there, probably overtrained.

[!! Shawn]

He came up from 135lbs, Spence, the best rated welterweight in his prime, had a 10-KO streak going and Mikey didn't even go down or was ever actually hurt from any punch landed.

"Surviving" might not mean much to many armchair experts but it is in fact a big deal that a lightweight was able to come up two weight classes, lose every single round, had 1000+ punches thrown at him, an he never was even close to going down.

Mikey's stock dropped slightly, but once the smoke clears and Mikey goes down to 140 and dominates, his stock will rise back up. JMM suffered a similar loss to Mayweather and he went down to 140 to get a few wins then KO'ed Pacquiao as the underdog 3 years later and I also thought he beat Bradley, outlanding him in power punches in 9 out of 12 rounds.

If you are a world class fighter, and you commit yourself to not getting knocked out, and forgo any attempts at winning, odds are you will see the final bell.

Its not a sign of courage, or durability. We have already seen Mikey doesn't have the best chin. He chose to survive. In the later rounds he did it by trying to smother Spence so he couldn't get leverage on his shots.

That was smart of Mikey, but he was in survival mode. His only goal was to see the final bell. He wasn't fighting back.

Omar Narvaez managed to shell up and survive Donaire without any attempts at fighting back. Nobody lauded his efforts. Why should we laud Mikey for doing the same thing?

Its very hard to get someone out of there who is only looking to survives, no matter how good you are.

When they are looking to survive, they are mounting no real offence, and giving you no opportunities to capitalize on. You can touch them up like Spence did, but they can smother you and take off the power, they can shell up and block enough and defelect enough that you cant really get anything in flush.

Its just how the game works, and its why points can be deducted for failing to initiate contact.

Mikey wasn't brave for taking the spence fight. He was incredibly ******.

He wasn't courageous for "daring to be great" when he decided essentially from the 2nd round on that he only wanted to see the last bell.

He once again, was naive, and arrogant for thinking there was any way there could be any other outcome to this fight.

And he sure has hell never even contemplated that Spence could outbox him.

If Spence had gone all out for the kill the entire night, he probably could have gotten Mikeys corner to throw in the towel.

He likely wouldn't have knocked mikey down or out as Mikey was hellbent on surviving, and only focusing on defense. But enough shots were slipping through and splitting the guard as to be worrying.

Robert Garcia did any interview where he said his father instructed him to throw in the towel, and he didnt.

Garcia's own corner was contemplating stopping it. They should have. He took a lot of punishment in the last 3 rounds that he didn't need to take. And it was clear that his skills were good enough to survive. But there was no need to take the beating.

Nobody views him as a warrior for doing that. It was actually another profoundly ****** decision from a camp that let Mikey take this profoundly ****** fight.

Mikey never had the style for this matchup. He fights off the jab from distance. He will never beat someone of spences side that choses to box from outside and to use their reach on him.

I'll go a step further and say that Mikey demonstrated that his timing was a "myth". He hit hard at lower weight classes, never had much activity, and really picked his fights carefully.

He looked really good against the level of opposition he fought, but hindsight is 20-20, and there are a lot of very good names around his division, and he has fought none of them.

He seems to have received a false boost of confidence from his win over Broner. But we have seen how many times what level Broner actually is?

When your best win is Adrian Broner, and you have guys like Lomachenko, Linares, etc around your weight.

Id say daring to be great starts with cleaning out your division. He made zero attempts to do such.

When his camp said they saw something in spence, we all know what they saw. $$$$$$

Thats it, a chance to cash out in a way they thought wouldn't tarnish his reputation. They took a fight they knew they were going to lose, because they thought they could write it off as spence being too big.

But then spence came out and showed that Mikey was just severely deficient in boxing skills.

[!! Shawn]

These dumb so-called fans being so butt hurt over a fighter being confident he's going to win. Like what are boxers supposed to do/say? Go the Billy Joe Saunders route and claim he's afraid of his opponent (like he did when asked about GGG the first time)?

So you want a lightweight, who's the underdog, to tell you the outcome of the fight is going to be an L for him? Don't you know that already? I sure did. But do I prefer Mikey to be confident and express his confidence to the fans? Of course, if not, then wtf are press conferences for? What's pre-fight "build-up" for? Gtfoh with your soft personality bs.

That's so dumb, and that's not how things work in boxing. If you want nice personalities, go watch soap opera or something else, not boxing. This sport is not for nice personalities, in this sport you have to be confident in yourself and you have to sell your confidence to the fans.

I get where you are coming from, and what you are talking about.

I for one am incredibly disappointed this fight happened, and even more disappointed in the fight.

The reason why is that we could have seen him in against some really really good fighters, fighters who p4p are better than Errol Spence, but he made no efforts at all to secure those fights.

If Mikey Garcia had made a legitimate effort to unify with Lomachenko, or even any of the other monsters around his weight class, you could say yeah. Maybe jump to 147 Mikey. Test the water, see how it goes. Then take a Spence fight, okay cool.

But thats not what happened. Mikey wanted Spence because he saw money. He saw a guy we couldn't secure the big fights at 147, and he thought, I can jump up and survive this fight, and make some really good money, and go back down with my reputation and career intact.

The problem about that, is he made his really good money by stealing it from the fans in a fight he knew, and you cant say there is anyway that he didn't know, that he was going to lose.

For the first time in his career, we saw Mikey really trying to talk trash and to sell a fight, and to try and create controversy.

Why? Because he know it was a joke fight. He knew it was a circus. And he was trying to get people to buy admittance to the freak show.

We already have a bad enough PPV environment without fights like these (I didn't buy it btw. I chose to watch it the day after). There is no need to further tarnish the image boxing has by staging fights that you can bet your life will be one sided blowouts on PPV.

Thats disrespectful to us the fans, to the sport we love, and to the goodwill of the people who pay their hard earned money to watch a fight that they are being told will be competitive.

Mikey thought he could go up, survive, make some cash, come back down and resume his career again. He would have an excuse for the loss, and the excuse was going to be the weight.

People would have forgiven him, but the way he lose, really revealed what he was doing. Not attempting to make a Lomachenko, because that fight would expose his true skill level.

The way he list, was as a result of insufficient skills not size. I am sure they thought they had the skills to look like they were putting up in effort in surviving. But it turns out he didnt.

He is being rightfully ridiculed for taking this ridiculous fight.

[!! Shawn]

He came up from 135lbs, Spence, the best rated welterweight in his prime, had a 10-KO streak going and Mikey didn't even go down or was ever actually hurt from any punch landed.

"Surviving" might not mean much to many armchair experts but it is in fact a big deal that a lightweight was able to come up two weight classes, lose every single round, had 1000+ punches thrown at him, an he never was even close to going down.

Mikey's stock dropped slightly, but once the smoke clears and Mikey goes down to 140 and dominates, his stock will rise back up. JMM suffered a similar loss to Mayweather and he went down to 140 to get a few wins then KO'ed Pacquiao as the underdog 3 years later and I also thought he beat Bradley, outlanding him in power punches in 9 out of 12 rounds.

Also, Marquez really tried to win from bell to bell. Even when he got dropped, he didn't go into survival mode. He didn't only hope to see the last bell. He tried his best to win. It proved to be a weight class too high for him, where with his style (which is somewhat similar to Mikeys) he couldn't cope with the reach of a larger fighter like Floyd.

Mikey didn't try to win. Thats why this will follow him. He went in to survive.

[theaside]

It was beyond pathetic what Mikey did, he didn't try to win the fight at all! He was simply there to just survive, and after all that talk?

There were moments in the fight where Spence would throw a combination, Mikey would block most of the shots and Spence would be open for shots inside from extending and Mikey would not even engage in these situations!

And why are you pumping your fist after every round when you are getting shutout?!?! wtf

There was never a sense of urgency in the second half of the fight from Mikey or at any point of the fight!

I lost a lot of respect for him after that fight, he was there to get a paycheck and that's it.

[!! Shawn]

the fight was like hopkins vs kovalev. kovalev out-skilled hopkins and battered him late. hopkins was in survival mode like mikey was


and would rather have seen mikey in compeititive fights, this attitude of lavishing praise on the likes of brook when he fought ggg, khan when he fought canelo is the kind of wrong attitude that leads to these fights actually happening

mikey fought to survive, spence snap and speed on his punches was not quite there, probably overtrained.

This is also something that isn't being discussed.

Spence in all likelihood did this on an off night, where Mikey MIGHT have even had a chance to do something if he actually had tried.

Not in terms of winning, but he could have potentially made rounds competitive to some degree.

But he didn't try.