Danny Garcia learning to adjust to move up in weight class

BOXING, LIKE EVERY sport, is about numbers. And, for now-former WBA/WBC super lightweight champion Danny "Swift" Garcia, the most important number concerning his career remains impressive at first glance.

It's hard to argue with a 30-0 record that includes 17 victories inside the distance. Garcia, 27, is still undefeated, still widely considered an elite fighter, and he and his trainer-father, Angel, still believe the Philadelphia-born fighter with Puerto Rican roots can be as good or better than he ever was.

Yet . . .

Garcia, who faces former two-division world titlist Paulie Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KOs) Saturday night in the "Premier Boxing Champions on ESPN" main event at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, is more concerned with other numbers. He is moving up from 140 pounds to welterweight (147), which probably wouldn't seem like that big a deal, even to ubiquitous diet-plan spokeswoman Marie Osmond. Those added pounds, however, are hugely significant to a professional athlete who starved himself for nearly two years to pare down to the super lightweight limit he now insists he no longer can make without sacrificing a significant percentage of his ring capabilities.

"Probably about 65 or 70 percent," Garcia said of the level of effectiveness at which he performed during his last three bouts. Although he won all three, decisions over Mauricio Herrera and Lamont Peterson were at least somewhat disputed and the other was a nontitle affair against an opponent (Rod Salka) perceived as being totally overmatched. That proved to be the case, as Salka was dropped three times in a massacre that didn't last two full rounds.

"A lot of it is willpower," Garcia said of the intangibles he drew upon to offset the sapping of his strength while attempting to make a weight his body kept telling him was no longer feasible. "I got a big heart. I refused to lose. I just went in there, fought as hard as I could and got the job done."

Garcia's perceived peak would be his no-doubt-about-it, 12-round unanimous decision over Argentina's power-punching Lucas Matthysse on Sept. 14, 2013, a fight many experts thought Garcia, the underdog, couldn't win. Sixty-five to 70 percent of that Garcia is more than good enough on most nights. But 100 percent, or close to it, obviously is better, and the slightly larger Garcia said he feels more fit than when he commanded the boxing world's attention with his bravura performances against Matthysse and Amir Khan, the latter of whom Garcia, also as an underdog, stopped in four rounds on July 14, 2012.

"When I fought Matthysse and Khan I felt strong, really strong," Garcia said. "I felt like when I hit somebody, they would go down. After [the Matthysse fight], I didn't feel strong anymore. I was punching my same punches, but I didn't have a lot of snap on them."

And now?

"An active Danny Garcia, a focused Danny Garcia, a Danny Garcia not struggling to make weight . . . I feel like nobody can beat him," said Garcia.

But the kind of dominant victory Garcia needs to re-establish the career momentum he acknowledges he probably has lost, might not be that easy to achieve against the 34-year-old Malignaggi. The Brooklyn native doesn't hit very hard, but he possesses the kind of technical skills that can, and have, frustrated a conga line of world-class fighters who mistakenly thought he couldn't last long against their superior firepower.

"I'm all about competing against the best," said Malignaggi, who has gotten rave reviews as a Showtime boxing analyst and had contemplated retiring as an active fighter since his most recent bout, a fourth-round TKO loss to then-IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter on April 19, 2014. "This kind of opportunity just fell into my lap. It was unexpected. But I always want to test myself against the best, so here I am."

But while Malignaggi said he feels he has everything to gain and nothing to lose by taking a risk at this stage of his boxing life, it is somewhat curious that Garcia would consent to making his welterweight debut against someone against whom it can be so difficult to look good.

"I feel like all the fights I had before led me up to this one," said Garcia, who is also looking forward to his longtime girlfriend giving birth to the couple's first child, a daughter, on or about the due date of Aug. 11.

"Herrera is a lot like Malignaggi. Even Salka, as a smaller man, tried to box. Peterson was moving around a lot. I see what everybody is trying to do against me, so now I'm prepared for it.

"We've been doing a lot of agility drills, working on cutting the ring off. I know I have to stay disciplined for 12 rounds, if it comes to that."

Garcia's dad, Angel, always throws verbal caution to the wind when discussing his son's prospects in any fight. He doesn't see Malignaggi having much more of a chance against his son than did the unfortunate Salka.

"Malignaggi, I'm not going to underestimate him or take nothin' from him," Angel said. "Malignaggi's been around a long time. But he's a runner. We're going to give him respect for the fighter he is, but, at the end of the fight, Danny's hand is going to be raised.

"Look, Danny's fight is not in the ring this time. It's been with his weight. Sometimes you got to move on to bigger and better things. That's what we're doing here."