Mikey Garcia wants to be back in the ring as much as his fans want to see him. In a recent interview with Fighthype.com Garcia (34-0, 28 KOs) told Luis Sandoval that he’s hoping for a comeback fight in the first quarter of this year.
“I’ve been wanting to get back, you know since last year but sometimes it just doesn’t happen, you know politics and business get involved and it’s not up to me, you know?” said Garcia.
Garcia’s skills were last on display against Juan Carlos Burgos (30-2, 20 KOs) in January of 2014. Garcia won a 12-round decision in defense of his WBO super featherweight title. He took the rest of the year off, during which it was reported that he filed suit against his promoter Top Rank claiming his contract with them had expired.
Prior to the layoff Garcia was skyrocketing towards pound-for-pound glory, there were talks of him fighting Yuriorkis Gamboa of Cuba or possibly moving up to lightweight and challenging Terence Crawford of Omaha.
Two years ago he started 2013 off with an eighth-round technical decision over Orlando Salido (42-12, 29 KOs) for the WBO featherweight title, followed by a fourth round knockout of Juan Manuel Lopez (34-5, 31 KOs) in June. He ended the year moving up in weight and knocking out Roman “Rocky” Martinez (28-2, 17 KOs) in eight rounds for the super featherweight title in November. Then after two months he fought Burgos and the layoff began.
“I want to get back. I want to comeback strong and make 2015 a very, very good year for me.” Garcia said.
When asked what weight we might see him back at, Garcia said 138 to 140 pounds depending on how his body feels making the weight. According to Garcia, he was supposed to be fighting at lightweight last year and expected to be fighting at junior welterweight this year.
“If I feel comfortable moving down to lightweight than I’ll come down to lightweight,” he said.
Garcia is a gifted boxer and was recently ranked 17th in the world by Ring Magazine in their list of top 100 fighters. When asked about possible opponents Garcia says he’s “well aware” of the up and comers and big names in his division and said he might jump back into a world title fight as soon as his second fight back.
The lightweight and junior welterweight divisions have some of the hottest names in boxing right now. There’s still Gamboa or Crawford, there’s also Adrien Broner, Omar Figueroa, Jesse Vargas and not to mention Lucas Matthysse, to name a few.
However right now there doesn’t seem to be much in the works for Garcia.
“There’s nothing set, there’s no dates or names that have been confirmed so I’m still waiting to hopefully get something.”
