What’s Next For WBC and IBF Lightweight Champion Mikey Garcia?

What’s Next For WBC and IBF Lightweight Champion Mikey Garcia?

By Dan McConnell

Mikey Garcia extended his unbeaten professional boxing record to 39-0 and he took Robert Easter Jr’s IBF Lightweight title away from him on Saturday night inside the Staples Centre, Los Angeles California with an impressive dominant performance. He now boasts a record of 30 wins by knock-out, 9 decisions with 0 losses.

Garcia defeated Easter via unanimous decision knocking the former IBF Lightweight Champion down in the third round and winning 118-109, 117-110 and 116-111 on the judge’s scorecards. The American, Garcia has won world titles at Featherweight, Junior Lightweight, Lightweight and Junior Welterweight and looks to follow in the footsteps of boxing greats like Floyd Mayweather and Sugar Ray Leonard by dominating every division he sets his sights on.

This was Garcia’s first fight under a new management company as he recently signed with Englishman Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing who looks to delve into the American boxing scene. Having an undefeated fighter the first to sign shows that Matchroom and Garcia mean business. Garcia looks untouchable so far at 30 years of age.

So who is next?

Leading up to the fight with Easter, Garcia already set his sights on moving up to conquer another division to face current undefeated 24-0 IBF Welterweight Champion, Errol Spence Jr. This would mean the opportunity to win a world title in a fifth weight division, two weight-classes above his current division.

Spence would prefer to unify Welterweight world titles but those fights are not available to him at the moment. WBA titleholder Keith Thurman is injured and his return date is not clear, plus when he does come back he firstly wants a ‘shake the ring rust off’ kind of fight after having not boxed since March 2017.

Shawn Porter and Danny Garcia meet on September 8th for a vacant WBC Welterweight world title and the winner won’t be ready to fight Spence before the end of the year, so Spence has said a major fight with Mikey Garcia interests him and why he was in attendance on Saturday night.

WBO Lightweight Champion Ray Beltran is tied up with title challenger Jose Pedraza on August 25th so this fight is off the cards. A possible showdown with WBA Lightweight Champion Vasyl Lomachenko for Garcia in a huge fight of the year is possible but unlikely while the Ukrainian recovers from shoulder surgery and aims to have a WBA-WBO Lightweight unification later this year with the winner of Beltran Pedraza. Then, to set a possible fight with Garcia next year in a unification of the Lightweight division.

Terrence Crawford recently defeated Jeff Horn to win the WBO Welterweight title and has set his sights on an end of the year bout too. Lomachenko and Crawford have been teased but no mention of a bout with Garcia.

Robert Garcia, Mikey’s older brother and trainer has said that if Mikey wants to go to Welterweight, he and his father think he’d be better off pursuing a fight with aging legend Manny Pacquiao who recently won a secondary Welterweight belt. This would add a huge name to Garcia’s unbeaten record as well as offer a decent pay-day.

There isn’t an awful lot of interesting fights at Super Lightweight that Garica would be interested in taking. Facing WBO Super Lightweight Champion Maurice Hooker, WBC Champion Jose Ramirez, WBA Champion Kiryl Relikh or fighting for the vacant IBF title aren’t something that would attract Garcia or fight fans to immediately buy the pay-per-view.

I think Errol Spence should be next for Mikey Garcia and both men seem to have verbally agreed to it before Saturday night. That seems the fight to make while both fighters are in a waiting game in their own respective divisions.