In what has to be seen as a bold move on the part of Mikey Garcia (34-0, 28 KOs), he’s vacated his World Boxing Organization super featherweight title and will be moving up to light welterweight instead of lightweight. Garcia can no longer make super featherweight, and he’s too big for the lightweight division as well.
Mikey’s going to try and fight at light welterweight, but obviously if things don’t work out well for him in that weight class then you can expect him to find a way to get back down to super featherweight or at least lightweight.
The WBO president Paco Valcarcel has already made WBO interim super featherweight champion Orlando Salido the full WBO champion as of Tuesday without Salido having to fight for the strap.
“His [Garcia] response was that he was unable to defend it because he has trouble making weight and wished to move to 140. Finally, they asked [that] we rank him at that division,” Valcarcel said to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.
It’s still unknown when Garcia will be fighting again because he’s still dealing with a dispute with his promoters at Top Rank. It’s been nine months since Garcia last fought when he defeated Juan Carlos Burgos by a 12 round decision. Garcia won the WBC super featherweight title last year in November in beating Roman Martinez by an 8th round knockout.
It could work out to Mikey’s benefit if he moves up to light welterweight because he can at least get a fight against Manny Pacquiao if Mikey stays with Top Rank. Mikey will need to make sure he gets a reasonable purse split for it to be worthwhile though because it’s pointless for him to fight Pacquiao if he’s only going to get a little over $1 million. He’ll need to get a purse split similar to the one Juan Manuel Marquez got in his last fight with Pacquiao for it to really pay off in fighting him.
It could be difficult for Garcia to fight in the light welterweight division because Top Rank promoter Bob Arum will likely be looking to match him against Terence Crawford once he moves up in weight to 140, as well as Chris Algieri and Ruslan Provodnikov. Those aren’t big fights, but those are the guys that Garcia will likely be expected to face if he’s with Top Rank.
