Photo by Hogan Photos
The boxing world let out some collective flatulence a couple of months ago when it was announced that Danny “Swift” Garcia, the reigning 140-pound king, would face 516th ranked lightweight Rod Salka.
Salka owns a record of 19-3. He has three knockouts. His last venture into the light welterweight division resulted in a majority decision loss at the hands of that human wrecking machine Ricardo Alvarez. So yes, it came as quite a surprise when he was suddenly thrust into the position of challenger for the lineal light welterweight championship of the world.
Of course, that didn’t last long.
The negative reaction to the fight announcement was so strong that the WBA and WBC refused to sanction the fight as a title bout. It’s certainly saying something when organizations who have seemingly ranked toddlers and the deceased suddenly take a moral stand against poor fights.
Of course, it isn’t Salka’s fault that he was awarded the opportunity of a lifetime. He was offered a major fight for the biggest payday of his career, and he accepted. But while Salka has taken some heat for being handed a fight he didn’t earn, Garcia seems to be receiving the brunt of the vitriol.
He barely squeaked by Mauricio Herrera back in March, with many viewers believing that Herrera deserved the nod. The performance won him zero new fans, and the subsequent announcement that his next fight would be Salka instead of say, Lamont Peterson, Adrien Broner, or anyone even remotely close to being ranked, didn’t help matters.
Garcia’s Wizard-Of-Oz-like advisor Al Haymon is probably the guy to talk to if you would like to know just how the hell this fight got made. Or maybe you could blame Oscar De La Hoya, whose attempts to hype the fight have been met with anything from yawns, to laughter, to utter contempt.
But what is Garcia’s role in this?
Indeed, Garcia has stated that he doesn’t pick his opponents. He simply fights who is in front of him. But it has to sting when he looks at his Twitter and Instagram page and finds it to be inundated with charges of cherry picking and other unpleasantness.
Or maybe it doesn’t bother him at all. He’ll be paid good money to fight a guy who probably has very little chance of springing an upset, unless Garcia has been huffing paint to prepare for the fight.
Certainly, Garcia isn’t the only fighter who is content to let his advisor/manager/promoter make the call on whom he fights. Manny Pacquiao has been more than content to fight whomever Bob Arum makes arrangements with. It’s hard to believe that if a guy like Pacquiao raised some concerns about fighting someone whose lone notable win is extremely questionable, his promoter would ignore him.
If Garcia had gone to his team after that shaky performance against Herrera and demanded a big-time showdown, would he have been cast aside like a child interrupting a conversation between parents? Doubtful. But Garcia, and many, many other fighters trust that Haymon will get them the most monetary gain without risking everything.
So we can lambaste Garcia for taking the fight, but he isn’t the first fighter to head down this road, and he certainly won’t be the last.
Perhaps Rod Salka can rise to the occasion and put on the performance of his life. Or maybe he just isn’t good enough. Either way, it would behoove Garcia to come out blazing. If he can put on a performance worthy of his title, it would go pretty far to erase the stench of this matchup.
Great fighters sometimes take less-than-scintillating fights. But they also destroy the inferior opponent in front of them. Garcia, despite being undefeated, sometimes leaves a little on the table.
His performances, while successful, tend to be a bit blunted one way or the other. He dominated Zab Judah for long stretches of their fight, but was hurt and glassy eyed by the end of it. He beat Lucas Matthysse, the monster puncher that nobody wanted to go near, but it was a close fight marred by repeated low blows from Garcia.
Other than his knockout of 83-year-old legend Erik Morales in a rematch nobody needed to see, his lone sensational performance came against Amir Khan, whose strategy in those days seemed to be to throw both hands and his chin at his opponent.
But Garcia is a rock-solid fighter. He doesn’t really have many weaknesses, and he’s very good at everything in the ring. His job Saturday is to put away an opponent that he should beat, and look damn good doing it.
It’s hard to imagine him sticking around for too much longer at 140. Many of boxing’s biggest fighters are just seven-pounds north. The first step is not to sleep through Saturday night’s fight.
We’ll try and do the same.
Some Random Notes From This Past Weekend:
Vic Drakulich had himself a pretty horrific night Saturday, but those feeling sorry for Diego Chaves should relax. The dude was warned about 60 times to stop holding. He refused, and then tried to tear out Brandon Rios’ eyelids. Next time, listen to the ref, no matter how shitty he is.
You could make the argument that Rios is the one who got hosed. Not only was the point taken away from him utterly moronic–he apparently made the mistake of pushing off when his opponent clung to him like a guy hanging from the edge of a cliff. But he was robbed of getting a chance at a come-from-behind victory.
It was fun watching Sergey Kovalev utterly destroy a hopeless opponent, but it was more fun to watch Bernard Hopkins utterly destroy Kovalev’s post fight interview.
I started to write about Jessie Vargas, but fell asleep at the keyboard.
It’s become clear that Rios is going to have to be matched properly in order to survive in the welterweight division. He still gets hit with everything, and his power doesn’t seem to have come up in weight with him. Still, who wouldn’t want to see him and Ruslan Provodnikov destroy each other for a few rounds?
Andre Ward sure is eager to piss the prime of his career away along with lots of his disposable income on losing court cases to Dan Goossen. One thing he won’t be able to rely on is his commentating. I’m baffled as to why HBO uses him. Listening to him fumble every handoff Jim Lampley fed him was almost as excruciating as watching the Vargas fight.
Chat with staff writer, Lou Catalano on Saturday, August 9, 2014 at 3 pm, EST on www.RoundByRoundBoxing.com to discuss Garcia vs. Salka and more
