Showtime Championship Boxing returns on Saturday with one of the biggest fights of the year. Two true top welterweights in Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter will compete for the vacant WBC belt over twelve rounds.
Turning pro after ultimately falling short in the final round of Olympic qualifying, Danny “Swift” Garcia (34-1, 20 KOs) was a known prospect since the opening bell of his career. Garcia received his first real exposure fighting on Golden Boy’s now defunct Telefutura fight series. That went well, but a 2010 Friday Night Fights slot proved nearly disastrous for his unbeaten record when Garcia needed a somewhat generous decision to get a win over lesser known British veteran Ashley Theophane.
Garcia stayed very active and rebounded a year later with dominant wins over former top junior welterweights Kendall Holt and Nate Campbell. Suddenly, the Theophane fight was largely forgotten. Those two wins launched Danny into the highest profile slot of his career, a title fight with Mexican legend Erik Morales. Now, Morales was faded and fighting at too high a weight then, but Garcia did get the win after a fun, competitive fight. He then cemented himself as a true top junior welterweight with a beautiful fourth round left hook knockout of Amir Khan four months later to become a unified titleholder.
After a pointless rematch of Morales in which he dominated and a comfortable win over a faded Zab Judah, Danny Garcia took on the biggest challenge of his career on the undercard of Floyd Mayweather’s huge pay-per-view fight with young Mexican star Canelo Alvarez. That night Garcia met Lucas Matthysse. The Argentinian by this point had built up a reputation as one of the most fearsome fighters in all of boxing. In his previous fight, Matthysse had completely walked through Lamont Peterson over three rounds in a way no one else had ever come close to doing before. Accordingly, Garcia was an underdog in this one. Despite this, he went on to largely control a pretty intense fight on his way to a decision victory.
If that night finally cemented Danny Garcia as a star in the sport, he nearly blew it with his following tune up with tricky fringe contender Mauricio Herrera. To my eye Garcia had clearly looked past Herrera and I didn’t think he deserved the win that the majority decision gave him. This caused Garcia and his team to step even further down. The end result of his next fight against Rod Salka was one of the biggest mismatches in recent memory. That matchup was entirely meaningless and a waste of everyone’s time. In some ways, its ongoing punchline status is the biggest blemish on the Philly fighter’s record still today despite a couple of questionable decisions and an actual loss.
The reaction of boxing fans to the Salka fight was so negative that it didn’t fully matter that Danny Garcia got a decision over Lamont Peterson in his next fight. Of course, the fact that Garcia banked the boring early rounds while Peterson dominated the exciting last few rounds didn’t help either. In a round by round scoring system, however, the result was fair. Next three straight fights against subpar opposition cemented the Salka-lite reputation Garcia was suddenly developing. Fights against badly faded versions of Paulie Malignaggi and Robert Guerrero weren’t received well. A showdown with never-was Canadian Samuel Vargas was even worse. Vargas is better than Salka for sure and at least the right size, but Danny’s reputation did not need another big mismatch like this one to say the least.
In the Malignaggi fight Danny had jumped up to welterweight and he won a vacant title in the Guerrero fight, making him a two division world titleholder. In March of last year, he brought it to meet fellow titleholder Keith Thurman. This was a really, really big fight that main evented a rare CBS show. After a slow start to the tactical fight, Garcia re-affirmed his standing as a top welterweight with his late rally that nearly stole the win. It didn’t and he took his first official loss via a narrow split decision, but those last few rounds were a reminder that he is an elite fighter. Of course, some would argue that Thurman allowed the rally by taking his foot off the gas, but it still happened whatever the reason. The former two division titleholder returned to fighting perceived to be washed up former top fighters in February when he met and finished a more game than expected Brandon Rios.
“Showtime” Shawn Porter (28-2, 17 KOs) was also a known amateur stand out who turned pro after failing to qualify for the 2008 games. Unlike Garcia, however, he didn’t look like a future superstar right out of the gate to my eye. This largely had to do with weight. He debuted and fought his first ten fights as a dramatically undersized middleweight. He dropped to junior middleweight for his next six fights, and even there he never looked like a potential world champion.
Things looked especially bleak when in late 2012 Porter ended up in an evenly fought draw with Julio Diaz at welterweight. Diaz in his day was a top lightweight, but by 2012 he was considered past his peak. Up two weight divisions against a young prospect who had been fighting at even higher weights, this wasn’t competitive on paper. The fights are never contested on paper, however, and Porter was lucky to walk away without a loss.
That fight seemed to spark something in Shawn Porter. His style turned into the aggressive mauler we know him as today shortly after. Before that night he was sort of confused stylistically, but not since then. Unlike Garcia with his muddier decisions, two fights later Porter cleanly won a rematch to wipe away the test too. He beat then elite Devon Alexander for his first title in a follow up before absolutely smashing Paulie Malignaggi permanently out of contention. In fact, it was Porter’s destruction of Paulie that made Garcia’s fight with him the very next year look so problematic on paper.
Next Showtime Shawn very narrowly lost his belt to the still unbeaten at welterweight Kell Brook. The Brit is a super talented fighter and was a really big welterweight to boot, yet the fight was still basically a toss up on the cards. Both of these men have only grown in my esteem since that close contest too. Porter followed that narrow loss up with a return fight against gatekeeper Erick Bone and he remains the only man to have stopped the Ecuadorian as the result of that fight despite Bone having been in with a number of good fighters. The now former titleholder really re-established himself next by roughing up ratings star Adrien Broner and dramatically surviving a big twelfth round knockdown in a major Showtime main event.
Porter sat out a year after his Broner win waiting on his delayed fight with arguable top welterweight Keith Thurman on CBS. He didn’t get the win that night, but his career is better off for the fight. Porter gave it everything he had and then some. A great fighter in Keith Thurman was barely able to hold him off and escape with a narrow, seven rounds to five win. His pressure was unreal. I also scored the fight for him in reversed scores for what that is worth, but I am definitely in the minority there.
If Keith Thurman can’t keep away from Porter’s aggression, I can’t see Danny Garcia as very likely to be able to. I see Thurman was more athletic on his feet and stronger with most of his shots. Danny does have better timing, however. That timing is best exemplified by some of his beautiful left hook finishes. I struggle to envision Danny taking a decision (without controversy) here, but with the way Shawn Porter recklessly bullies his way in could lead to a beautiful shot in return ending the fight early. I also can’t help but to wonder how Garcia is going to mentally respond to Porter’s mauling. Extremely physical clinches are to be expected with elbows and headbutts flying around.
I expect a good fight here and I will go on record to say that I think Shawn Porter takes it by decision. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was hurt at least once though by leaving himself too open for a well timed left hook counter.
The main event is being supported by a two fight undercard. In the co-main event, surging welterweight contender Yordenis Ugas (22-3, 11 KOs) looks to take one step closer to a title shot against the winner of the main event by taking on WBC mandated opponent Cesar Miguel Barrionuevo (34-3-2, 24 KOs) in a “semifinal eliminator.” Exciting Polish heavyweight brawler Adam Kownacki (17-0, 14 KOs) meets former recent titleholder Charles Martin (25-1-1, 23 KOs) in the opener. I like the fight, but does it ever hurt to type that last sentence. Charles Martin is the worst heavyweight titleholder of all time. I’m just going to declare it. He did not deserve the shot as he had absolutely no wins of note and then he won the belt on a freak injury in the fight itself without doing anything at all. Anthony Joshua made super quick work of him to end that blemish on the historical record of the sport. With that said, however, there is still time for redemption. Martin has power on his record at least and Kownacki is there to be hit. Adam also throws a lot of shots for a big man with power of his own, however, and I expect that’ll be Martin’s undoing sooner rather than later. Ugas-Barrionuevo is harder to get a read on because the Argentinian has basically no US exposure. In these sort of fights the known favorite almost always rolls though. Ugas is expected to win.
Showtime has the broadcast at 9 PM Eastern on Saturday night. This show will conflict with Superfly 3 on HBO, unfortunately. That tripleheader starts only 45 minutes later.
