THE boxing adage “A good big man will always beat a good small man” couldn’t have been truer last Sunday.
Mikey Garcia, undefeated and unchallenged in four weight divisions, tried as hard as he could, but had no answer for Errol Spence, an elite fighter in the welterweight division who was just too big, too strong and too good for Mikey.
SIZE. Minutes after I emailed in my column, picking underdog Garcia to pull off the upset, I stumbled upon pictures of both fighters during the weigh-in showing Garcia looking microscopic beside a muscular, towering Spence.
This made me do a double-take wondering about the disparity, but when I checked again, I forgot that Mikey was only 5”6” while Spence was a stratospheric 5’9 ½.”
True enough, the bigger Spence pretty much dominated the whole fight.
Right from the get-go, he imposed his size advantage and made Garcia tentative and unsure.
Normally, Garcia likes to take his time before figuring out his opponent’s style, but this time around no amount of cerebral calculation could make up for a huge deficit in actual size and power.
And not only that, despite being the bigger fighter, Spence (25-0, 21 KOs) was the faster one, as he was quite comfortable in his resident division.
In contrast, Mikey who jumped two weight divisions, lacked the pop in his punches and at times looked sluggish.
In the end, Garcia (39-1, 30KOs) was lucky to finish the fight on his feet and the scorecards 120-107, 120-108 (twice) were emblematic of the one-sided beatdown that just transpired.
HOPKINS VS TRINIDAD. That fight reminded me of another super-fight that took place in the middleweight division back in 2001.
Felix Trinidad was an undefeated murderous punching welterweight who had gone up to the middleweight division. He first took out WBA champ William Joppy and then trained his sights on IBF champ Bernard Hopkins.
Prior to the fight, Hopkins predicted there was on way “Tito” could beat him, and he was right.
He took all that Trinidad had to offer, roughed him up and stopped him in the 12th round. “Tito” was never the same after that fight. He only fought four more times after the loss going 2-2 and retired in 2008.
LAST ROUND. It’s on my beloved Auntie Belle Maningo Quijano who celebrates her birthday this week. Cheers!