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Garcia looking to be Philly's next ring champ

The earliest bouts of a deep undercard can be a very lonely place for a young boxer, whether the venue is a gritty fight club in Philadelphia or an opulent casino resort in Las Vegas.

Danny Garcia of Juniata Park hopes to make the Olympics. (Sarah J. Glover/Staff Photographer)
Danny Garcia of Juniata Park hopes to make the Olympics. (Sarah J. Glover/Staff Photographer)Read more

The earliest bouts of a deep undercard can be a very lonely place for a young boxer, whether the venue is a gritty fight club in Philadelphia or an opulent casino resort in Las Vegas.

On Dec. 8, 2007, Danny "Swift" Garcia was fighting in his second professional fight, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It was a big-time setting, but not a big-time atmosphere. Or, at least it wasn't 3 hours prior to the main event.

"I fought on the undercard of a show headlined by Ricky Hatton and Floyd Mayweather Jr.," says Garcia, 23, a Philly native from Juniata Park. "There was almost no one in the arena then. But when Hatton and Mayweather came out, every seat was filled. There had to be 16,000 or 17,000 people in there. The place was going crazy.

"I looked around, took it all in and thought, 'Man, I got a long way to go.' "

Garcia stopped Jesus Villareal in two rounds that night, his thudding punches echoing throughout the nearly empty room. But the 2006 USA Boxing national champion has indeed come a long way since then, just as he imagined he would. Next Saturday on HBO, millions will get to observe one of boxing's hottest growth properties when Garcia (22-0, 14 KOs) takes on Erik "El Terrible" Morales for Morales' WBC super-lightweight championship. Garcia will attempt to join Bernard Hopkins as the only pro world champions carrying Philadelphia's proud but fraying pugilistic banner.

You might say that Danny Garcia has finally arrived as the major star that the executives at Golden Boy Promotions, including Hopkins, believed he would be despite his surprising failure to make the 2008 U.S. Olympic boxing team that competed in Beijing, China. Their assumption, however, would be just a tad premature. Being in a high-visibility championship fight is one thing; winning it is another.

Angel Garcia, Danny's father and trainer, is convinced that his son is on the threshold of a breakthrough. The younger Garcia is a slight favorite against Morales (52-7, 36 KOs), a Mexican icon who someday could be voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Danny's dad, however, believes the outcome is as close to assured as it ever gets in the prize ring.

"He is so ready," Angel says after another of his son's spirited training sessions at the Harrowgate Boxing Club in Kensington. "We've had a great camp. He's looking strong and fast.

"Danny is going to win, and win big. This is his time to explode on the scene and put his name out there. Everybody in the country is going to see this fight. East Coast, West Coast, it don't matter. People are going to see Danny become the first Latino world champion from Philadelphia. He's going to make history, man."

But what of Morales, who figures to have the crowd behind him in Houston, which has a large Mexican population? Or the fact that the sanctioning organization is the Mexico City-based WBC, which fairly or not, has a reputation for giving every benefit of the doubt to Mexican fighters?

"There's no way I can see Morales beating Danny," Angel says. "Ten years ago, Morales was very dangerous. Now? He's just someone else in Danny's way. He has the title, but [the powers that be] wanted him to get it. It was politics."

That is a not-so-subtle dig at Morales' semi-unobstructed path to his latest world championship, and fifth in a different weight class after reigns at super bantamweight, featherweight, super featherweight and lightweight. Morales, 35, is 4-1 since ending a 3-year retirement in March 2010, his most recent outing a 12-round unanimous decision over countryman Pablo Cesar Cano on Sept. 17 for the vacant WBC 140-pound belt.

In some ways, Cano, 22, is much like Garcia. He entered his showdown with Morales with a 22-0 record that included 18 victories inside the distance, but his youth and relatively unpolished skills were exposed against the crafty veteran.

Danny Garcia, while not as openly confident as his father, says he should not be compared to the likes of Cano.

"I respect everyone I fight, and I respect Morales," he notes. "But I have to think he's looking at me like he looked at that kid he just beat. [Cano] was young and undefeated, like me. But I'm not him. I'm better than he is."

He is, in the opinion of more than a few wise observers of the boxing scene, better than a whole lot of up-and-coming fighters with glitzy records. Garcia took up boxing at age 10 at the Harrowgate, but he would have gotten his start even earlier had he been allowed to do so.

"I wanted to box when I was 7, but I couldn't because in Philadelphia you need to be 10 to get insurance," he said. "So me and my dad waited 3 years until I could sign up, and I've been fighting since then."

A love of boxing, and the proclivity to do it well, must be in Danny's genes. Angel, a former amateur boxer, never fought professionally, but he has trained his son all these years and, it would seem, quite capably. An uncle, Renardo Alvarado, had one pro bout.

But it is Danny whose potential was obvious at an early age.

"My first 2 weeks, I remember shadowboxing," he said. "Mike Malloy from the gym came over and asked, 'How many fights have you had, kid?' I said, 'I don't have none.' He didn't believe me. He was sure I must have fought before.

"Two weeks later, I had my first fight - and I won."

With that initial taste of ring success came Garcia's first big goal, which was to someday represent the United States in the Olympics, a dream shared by almost every other boxing neophyte who laces up a pair of padded gloves.

"From the time I started boxing, my dream was to win an Olympic gold medal," Garcia says. "At 10, I can't say I knew how big the Olympics are. I just knew that every kid in the gym wanted to win an Olympic gold medal. Every kid in every gym probably wants to win an Olympic gold medal.

"As I got older, I began to understand just how much it means to represent your country at the Olympics and how hard it is to do that. But you want what you want, right? I knew all about Meldrick Taylor [the North Philadelphian who took gold in Los Angeles in 1984]. I knew about David Reid [another Philly gold medalist, at the 1996 Atlanta Games]. I knew about Rock Allen [who made the U.S. team but didn't medal in Athens in 2004]. I wanted what they wanted, and what they achieved."

Garcia inexorably progressed toward his goal, capturing a fistful of amateur titles, but the dream ended when he was upset by Jeremy Bayan in a first-round bout at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in 2007 in Houston - the same city in which he'll fight for his first world title as a pro.

"I thought I fought a good fight that day," Garcia remembers. "The other kid fought a good fight. I can't take nothing away from him. I just thought the scoring wasn't fair. In the first round, I was thinking it should have been something like 3-3. But when I went back to the corner, I was told I was down, 9-1. I was, like, 'What? That can't be.' You hear about amateur boxing politics, and there must be something to it because it did seem like [the judges] were favoring the other kid. But what can you do about it? When I lost at the trials, it broke my heart.

"You work for years and years to make the Olympics, then something goes wrong and it's all gone. But that doesn't mean you can't still make your mark in another way. Losing in the Olympic Trials made me that much hungrier to become a world champion as a pro. OK, so I didn't get to play in the big bowl game. But March 24 will be like my Super Bowl. I don't think anything can top that."

Shelly Finkel, who has managed or advised world champions Evander Holyfield, Meldrick Taylor, Pernell Whitaker, Mark Breland, Mike Tyson and the

Klitschko brothers, was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2010. Finkel is now out of the managerial end of boxing, but Garcia is one of the last fighters whose career he handled. He still follows him. Finkel, too, believes that Garcia is prepared to step up to the championship level.

"His first couple of fights, even though Danny was scoring knockouts, he was still tentative," Finkel said. "Now he's feeling more and more comfortable. I think the last fight, when he got nailed with a good shot [by former world champ Kendall Holt] and shook it off, it took the guy's heart and showed just how special Danny can be.

"When I signed him, I thought Danny was the best prospect to come out of Philly in over 20 years, since Meldrick Taylor in the 1980s. I really think he's ready for Morales. He just has to fight smart and not be overly impressed that, 'Hey, I'm in there with Erik Morales.' If he looks at Erik as just another fighter he has to beat, and not some sort of legendary figure, he'll win."

Unlike Mike Jones, the highly ranked welterweight contender from North Philadelphia, Garcia hasn't fought much in or around his hometown. He's had only two fights in Philly and two in Atlantic City, Golden Boy preferring to keep him busy with bouts in California, Nevada and Texas. It is a concerted strategy, the idea being that such a valued prospect should not get caught up in the pressure of being the hot local guy fighting before hard-to-impress local audiences.

"A lot of fighters from Philly get hung up on wanting to be the best fighter in Philly," Garcia says. "I'm trying to be the best fighter in the world."

But Garcia understands that being the best fighter in Philly has its own cachet, one that he would never dismiss as something meaningless. He lives here, he mostly trains here, and he isn't apt to forget who he is and where he's from.

"I always knew Philadelphia was a tough town for boxing, and by 'tough' I mean 'good,' " Garcia said. "Whenever I'd go someplace else for a tournament or something, I'd be thinking, 'These other guys don't train like we do in Philly.'

"It just seems to me that Philadelphia fighters are hungrier. They're more determined. Our gyms are grittier. Some gyms in other towns are too nice; they're almost like hotels. The Philadelphia boxing environment is just different. I can't explain it. But you always know the guy training next to you wants [success] just as much as you do, and is working just as hard to get it, so you can't ever let up."

Should Garcia dethrone Morales, he plans to lobby Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer about staging a defense locally. That is another of his dreams.

"I think it would be really something to fight as a world champion before my family and friends," Garcia says. "Maybe I'm not as well-known at home as some other guys, but that's about to change. They're going to know me soon because I'll be the world champion."