Danny Garcia vs. Shawn Porter purse bid on Friday

Boxingnews24.com

By Allan Fox: The World Boxing Council will hold a purse bid this Friday for the welterweight match between Danny ‘Swift’ Garcia and ‘Showtime’ Shawn Porter at the WBC headquarters in Mexico City, Mexico.

The management for Garcia and Porter are free to negotiate a deal up until the purse bid takes. Both fighters are with manager Al Haymon, so there’s a good chance a deal will be reached before Friday.

Garcia (34-1, 20 KOs) and the 30-year-old Porter (28-2-1, 17 KOs) will be fighting for the vacant WBC 147lb title that was vacated recently by inactive fighter Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman, who hasn’t fought since March 4 last year.

Porter’s father Kenny Porter believes that Garcia doesn’t want the fight with Shawn. If that turns out to be true, then it could be a waste of time for the WBC to hold a purse bid. Garcia has the option of either fighting the winner of the Lucas Matthysse vs. Manny Pacquiao fight for the WBA ‘regular’ welterweight title or he can take more tune-up level fights until Thurman eventually comes back from his injury problems and can fight him either later this year or more likely in 2019.

It’s difficult to know for certain what Garcia’s next move will be, as he’s frequently had a lot of soft fights after taking a tough fight. For example, after Garcia’s win over Lucas Matthysse in 2013, Garcia took six easy fights before facing Thurman last March. After losing to Thurman, Garcia took a soft fight against Brandon Rios last February and stopped him in the 9th round. If Garcia holds to his pattern of taking a lot of easy fights after a tough one, he might not face Porter and instead could look to face another weaker fighter. Hopefully that’s not what Garcia does, because he’s 30-years-old and needs to maximize what little time he has left in boxing.

Garcia didn’t look good against Rios in winning that fight. Garcia was hit a lot and his face was badly marked up by the end of the fight.

Thurman supposedly vacated the WBC welterweight title, but some boxing fans believe he was forced to give up the belt by the sanctioning body due to his year of inactivity since his win over Garcia last March.

IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. said this week that he’s been told that he’ll be fighting the winner of the Garcia vs. Porter fight if it happens. Garcia says he thinks he can beat Spence. If Spence does get a shot at facing the winner of Garcia-Porter, there will be a very good chance that he wins the WBC belt and becomes the man in the division. Spence wants Thurman to give up his WBA title, so he can fight for it. A fight between Spence and Terence Crawford could take place soon depending on promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank. If he feels confident Crawford can win that fight, then he’ll let him face Spence. If not, then he’ll choose not to make it.