After all the talk about what Mikey Garcia (39-0, 30 KOs), the four-division world champion supposedly saw in the armor of the IBF Welterweight World Champion Errol Spence Jr. (24-0, 21 KOs), it was not evident in this fight.
Spence landed his jab time after time throughout this fight and Garcia had no answer to the the long reach of his taller and stronger foe.
Sitting ringside to see this fight was Manny Pacquiao, the only eight division world champion who may be his next challenger, but it's ten years too late.
Why do that when fans know Pacquiao should be out of the game. Pacquiao is eleven years older than the younger Spence, was ducked by Mayweather for five years and when they finally did fight, lightning struck in a bottle and Marquez TKO'd the Pacman. And to top that, when the Pacman did fight Floyd he had an injured shoulder and basically had to fight with one arm, and it still was a close fight.
Spence should be fighting the top welterweights in the world, but instead he has to fight a great boxer who is two weight divisions below him, and no disrespect to Mikey Garcia.
It's not completely Spence' fault that the likes of Thurman and Porter don't want to fight him, for whatever reason they have, but promoters are the ones who make the fights happen. He actually should be fighting the next best welterweight in the division, Terence Crawford.
Toward the late rounds of the fight it was evident that Garcia was taking a lot of punishment.
Yes, Garcia did make Spence go the distance, but a moral victory is not what Garcia wanted, he wanted to make history and become a legend.
Speaking of legends, he was not able to rise to the level of Roberto Duran or Sugar Ray Leonard, but he did give it a try and must be congratulated for it.
Again, Spence is now calling out Pacquiao, but to some it is another gift. First he fights someone who is two weight levels below him which he was expected to win and he did and now he is calling out an older Pacman.
There are others who will say, well, if you can't stop Garcia, then how do you expect to stop the other top welterweight champions.
And there will also be others that will say, if you claim to be so great why don't you move up two weight divisions and fight the top fighters in that division. His fans will answer that with, Spence was not the one that was called out, Garcia was the one who called him out. That is true, but for some reason he did not KO Garcia.
In what was billed as something to the level of Sugar Ray Leonard/Hagler and Roberto Duran/Hagler or Duran/Barkley it fell very very short.
Spence went on to win by unanimous decision as expected and now we will have to wait to see what younger welterweights will challenge him like Garcia did.