Mikey Garcia says Linares will NEVER get fight with him if he faces Lomachenko next

Boxingnews24.com

By Dam Ambrose: Mikey Garcia says if WBA lightweight champion Jorge Linares faces Vasyl Lomachenko next, then he’ll NEVER get then chance to fight him. Mikey states that he’s got 1 fight left at 135, and then he’ll be moving up to 140 to campaign in that weight class.

Garcia (37-0, 30 KOs) would like his final fight at lightweight to be against Linares (44-3, 27 KOs), but if he faces Lomachenko in his next fight, then he’ll go ahead and battle IBF World lightweight champion Robert Easter Jr. and move up to 140 after that.

Ideally, Mikey should fight both the winner and the loser of the Linares vs. Lomachenko fight. It’s not as if there’s a whole bunch of guys for Mikey to fight at 135 and 140. Once you remove Lomachenko, Linares and Robert Easter Jr. from the list of top fighters at 135, there’s no one else for Mikey to fight. At 140, Mikey is facing a very beatable guy in Lipinets instead of waiting to battle the winner of the Jose Ramirez vs. Amir Imam fight for the WBC light welterweight title. Ramirez would be a big problem for Mikey. That can punch and he looks to be the best fighter at 140 by far at this point now that Terence Crawford has moved up in weight.

The promoters for Linares and Lomachenko are in discussions to put together a fight for April 28 or May 12 on ESPN. With the likely big offer that Top Rank, the promoters for Lomachenko, are putting in for Linares, it’s hard not to see this fight taking place. Mikey had the chance to fight Linares recently, but he opted to make him wait so he could move up to light welterweight to take a fight with IBF 140 lb. champion Sergey Lipinets on March 10 on Showtime Boxing.

Linares, 32, was ready to face Mikey, but then he instead chose to move up to 140 to take on Lipinets. Mikey felt the Lipinets fight was important because it would enable him to win a 4th division world title. It didn’t matter obviously that Lipinets isn’t considered the best fighter in the light welterweight division. Mikey still wants to win his IBF 140 lb. title so he can win a 4th division world belt.

“Hopefully we get the fight this summer,” Mikey Garcia said to ES News Reporting about a fight between him and Jorge Linares. “I’ve been hearing some stuff about it,” Mikey said about the Linares vs. Vasyl Lomachenko fight talks. “He’s [Linares] not supposed to fight nobody else. He’s supposed to fight me. Let’s do it then. Why go somewhere else? Nah, nah, nah, he can’t. He has to fight me. He can’t take on Lomachenko. If he fights Lomachenko, then he’s never going to fight me. If he fights Lomachenko next, he ain’t EVER going to fight me, because I’ll end up fighting [Robert] Easter, and then I’m out. I’m done [with the 140 lb. division],” Mikey said.

Mikey should have said, ‘I’ll fight the winner of Linares vs. Lomachenko.’ He’s not saying that, and it just looks like he’d dodging Lomachenko. It’s been 5 years Mikey last fought a good opponent in Orlando Salido in January 2013, and that fight ended badly. Mikey complained that his nose was broken in the 8th. At the time of the stoppage, Salido was taking over the fight against a tired looking Mikey, who was staring to get punished with body shots. Mikey was wilting badly against Salido, and then his trainer/brother Robert Garcia pulled him out of the fight after the 8th, saying his nose was broken. Salido revealed that he had a broken nose too, but he wasn’t quitting.

It sounds like Mikey understands that Linares will probably lose to Lomachenko, so he wants the boxing public to know that he’s not going to stick around to fight the winner of that fight. Lomachenko is probably going to be a big favorite over Linares. Now that Mikey is letting it known that he won’t fight Linares, he’s also letting Lomachenko know that he won’t get a fight against him either. It makes Mikey look like he’s swerving Lomachenko by giving Linares an ultimatum. Mikey should be fighting the top welterweights like Errol Spence, Terence Crawford and Keith Thurman instead of going after Sergey Lipinets for his IBF 140 lb. strap. The boxing fans don’t care about Mikey’s fight with Lipinets, because this guy isn’t seen as a top fighter.

”I’m not going to be able to stay at 135 longer, and I’ll probably just move to 140,”Mikey said. ”I’ve got one more fight at 135. It has to be him [Linares]. Now if he wants to take on Lomachenko, that’s his call,” Mikey said.

If Mikey had to wait for the winner of the Linares-Lomachenko fight, then he would be expected to face Lomachenko if he won. The boxing fans would want Mikey to do that. Now that Mikey is letting Linares know that he has to fight him now or else he loses his chance forever, it gives the appearance that he doesn’t wish to fight Lomachenko, because he’s expected to win that fight.

It looks like Mikey is running from Lomachenko. For a while there, Mikey was eager to fight Lomachenko. But after the Ukrainian fighter’s recent win over Guillermo Rigondeaux last December, Mikey has gone quiet on the subject of wanting to fight him. A loss for Mikey against Lomachenko would likely permanently ruin his dreams of becoming a PPV fighter.