Mikey Garcia must overcome Errol Spence’s size advantage

By Dan Ambrose: Mikey Garcia (39-0, 30 KOs) will be the equivalent of a modern day David facing the much bigger and heavier Goliath in IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. (24-0, 21 KOS) on March 16 at the AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas.

This fight is perceived by the boxing public as a mismatch in favor of Spence, and it’s hard to disagree with that perception. What Mikey is trying to do in beating Spence is like someone attempting to climb Mount Everest without the proper climbing gear. Mikey isn’t suited for the welterweight division, and even if he was, he’d still be up against it in facing Spence.

Garcia vs. Spence will be televised on Fox pay-per-view.

Mikey won’t have the benefit of a catchweight or rehydration clause to help make the fight with Spence a little fairer, so he’s going to need to do the best that he can against him. It’s unclear why Mikey didn’t ask for a catchweight or rehydration clause in the contract, but it’s likely that he didn’t want to be seen as asking for a handicap.

The 30-year-old Garcia has assured his boxing fans that he knows what he’s doing in moving up two weight classes from lightweight to welterweight to challenge the 5’9 1/2″ Spence on March 16. Garcia, 5’6″, will be giving up three inches in height and four inches in height.

This is not going to be the type of fights that Garcia has had in the past where he fought someone roughly his own size in Roman Martinez and Orlando Salido. Spence is going to be towering over Mikey in this fight, and it won’t be just height that he’s going to need to deal with. Spence is arguably a middleweight in terms of his weight after he rehyrates.

This is easily the biggest fight of Mikey and Spence’s career. It’s taken this long for both of them to get a mega-fight, and they don’t want to blow it by losing. Spence is in the driver’s seat though with this fight, as he’s in his natural weight class. Spence is more of a junior middleweight than a welterweight, but he’s still young enough to make weight for the 147 lb weight class.

There’s something that Garcia, 30, has spotted in Spence’s fighting style that makes him believe that he can beat him. Mikey likely sees how wide open Spence is when he attacks his opponents. To be sure, Spence is there to be hit when hes on the attack. If Mikey and Spence were both the same size and fighting at lightweight, this would be a winnable fight for the Southern California fighter. Of course, if Spence was fighting at lightweight with the same punching power he has now, then Mikey would be at the disadvantage that he’s going to be in when he faces the Texas native on March 16. Spence likes to come forward in his fights looking to land body shots to wear down his opponents. Normally that would be a style that Mikey would thrive against, but he’s not going to be a huge puncher at 147. We saw in Mikey’s fight against Sergey Lipinets last March that his shots were bouncing off the head of the Kazakhstan fighter without troubling him in the least. Lipinets is a medium sized light welterweight. He’s not big for the weight class. In moving up to welterweight, Mikey will be facing a junior middleweight-sized Spence, and that’s going to make it extremely tough for his punches to have any effect on him. For all intents and purposes, Mikey is going to be another Chris Algieri. In other words, a skinny guy without the size or the punching power to compete with Spence. Two years ago, Spence sliced through Algieri like a hot knife slicing through butter in knocking him out in the 5th round. Spence has gotten better since then, and he’s even more dangerous now. That’s going to make Mikey’s job that much harder when he gets inside the ring with Spence.

The ultimate goal that Mikey has in fighting Spence is to win his 5th division world title. It would be massive win for Mikey, cementing him immediately as the guy to beat at welterweight. Since Spence is considered the #1 welterweight in the division right now, Mikey would take over the throne and establish himself as the new kind of the 147 lb division.

It’s expected that Garcia will try and bulk up for the Spence fight to make himself look more like a welterweight and less like a lightweight, but that’s going to be hard for him to do. Mikey looked like a flabby lightweight earlier this year when he fought Lipinets for his IBF light welterweight title. Mikey had clearly added size to his 5’6″ frame, but it mostly looked like a layer of smooth fat. He hadn’t added muscle, which isn’t surprising. Mikey is an Ectomorph, and it’s difficult for those types of bodies to add muscle no matter how hard they try. Mikey is going to have the same problems adding muscle moving up to 147. He’s going to put weight on, but it might not be the type of weight that is going to help him withstand the huge power shots from the naturally bigger Spence. Even if Mikey does add a bunch of muscle the way that Saul Canelo Alvarez suddenly did for his first fight against Gennady Golovkin, it’s not going to help him withstand his power shots. It doesn’t matter how much weight Mikey puts on. He’s still going to need to be able to take Spence’s shots. Mikey has never fought anyone with the power that Spence possesses. Lipinets can punch a little, but he’s not in the same league as the other guys at 140 like Ivan Baranchyk, Kiryl Relikh, Regis Prograis, Josh Taylor or Jose Ramirez, and he’s clearly not in Spence’s class.

When former IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook moved up to middleweight to challenge Gennady Golovkin for his titles in 2016, he was wiped out in five rounds by the Kazakhstan fighter. Brook received a lot of credit from boxing fans for being competitive with Golovkin for the first four rounds before being stopped on his feet in the 5th. However, Brook, 5’9″, was essentially the same weight as the 170 lb Golovin, and just a little big shorter than him. Golovkin is 5’10 1/2″, and he had only an inch and a half height advantage over Brook. Mikey, 5’6″, is going to be so much smaller than Spence on fight night. Although Mikey is said to walk around in the 170s between fights, he’s not in shape at that weight. At the most, Mikey is no more than 150 lbs when he’s in shape. Spence is firm at 170+, and he’s going to be much bigger on fight night than Mikey. If Mikey can sign up with a Charles Atlas class, he might be able to add a massive amount of muscle to his frame overnight the way Canelo Alvarez did for his two fights against Golovkin. It’s not likely to happen though.

Mikey can try and do a couple of things to beat Spence. A. Go straight into the teeth of Spence’s offense to try and KO him. B. box and move all night long and hope to outsmart Spence.