Mikey Garcia vs. Sergey Lipinets – Results

Boxingnews24.com

By Dan Ambrose

Undefeated Mikey Garcia (38-0, 30 KOs) had more problems than expected in beating a slow, plodding IBF World light welterweight champion Sergey Lipinets (13-1, 10 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night to capture his 4th and likely his final division world title at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas.

A lot of credit must be given to Lipinets for hanging tough and taking the fight to Mikey to make it a fairly close fight. Despite going into tonight’s fight as the IBF light welterweight champion, Lipinets is not the best or even the 4th best fighter in the 140 lb. division. He’s one of the best, but not nearly the best. Never the less, Lipinets gave Mikey all kinds of problems tonight in walking him down and making the fight MUCH closer than the scores handed in by the assigned judges.

The scores were 116-111, 117-110, and 117-110. Boxing News 24 scored it 7 rounds to 5 for Mikey. There were too many close rounds that could have gone either way. Lipinets’ harder punches made it easy to score rounds for him. Mikey was trying to be too clever and not letting his hands go enough.

Mikey moved up to 140 for ego purposes to win a 4th division world title against a guy he felt he could beat in Lipinets. Mikey accomplished his goal in beating Lipinets to win the IBF belt to give him his 4th division world title belt, but in the process, he was badly exposed by the Belarusian fighter.

Mikey is not powerful for the 140 lb. weight class, and he barely won the fight tonight against a guy that is probably no better than the 5th best fighter in the weight class. Mikey needs to move back down to 135 fast before he takes a loss against one of the better fighters.

Mikey, 30, but he needs to take this fight as a signal that he’s not the same guy in this weight class as he was when he as fighting at 126, 130 and 135. Those are weight classes that are better for him. But with that said, Mikey will have a lot of problems if he moves back down to lightweight and fights Vasyl Lomachenko. The Ukrainian fighter has too difficult a style for Garcia to beat him. It’s doubtful Mikey takes the fight with Lomachenko, because he’s very careful in who he faces.

Mikey is a quality guy when it comes to picking out opposition. He’s a lot like Floyd Mayweather Jr. in that respect. Mikey can probably beat everyone at lightweight except for Lomachenko. That’s a bad fight for Mikey. He wanted to fight WBA lightweight champion Jorge Linares in a unification fight, but it looks like he may be too late to get that fight because he could be facing Lomachenko next on May 12th. Lomachenko vs. Linares in in the works for May 12.

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